i 


it 


Ll 


} 
4 


— 
porns 
nd 
—, 
= > 
eer 


"i 
HT 
Hi 
HH 
Hitt 


OUCH STTUCtd tT 
HH 
HUT 


Vytyte 
iit} 


aT 


, au ist} till 

eFiih i} 

el THE HT Ht 
me HV dbatebeche 





THE UNIVERSITY 





OF ILLINOIS 


LIBRARY. 


945% 
Ceb5r 
9/4 
v. | 


Return this book on or before the © 
Latest Date stamped below. A 
charge is made on all overdue 


books. 
U. of I. Library 


MAY 14°38 
NOU —4 1941 
‘JAN 13 1942 





bo to: 
Qua -4 96! 
mt . 107 





11148-S 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


https://archive.org/details/southernitalysicO1 craw 


SOULBMERN. ITALY AND SICILY 
AND | 
Poe Oo RULERS OF THE. SOUTH 


VOL, I 





CoPyYRIGHT, 1900, 


By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.. 





Set up and electrotyped October, 1900. Reprinted December, 
1900. 

New edition in one volume September, 1905; May, 1907. 
January, 1910. 


Nortoood JBress 
J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 








SOUTHERN ITALY AND SICILY 


AND 


PoE RUEERS OF THE SOUTH 


BY 


FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD 


AUTHOR OF “IN THE PALACE OF THE KING,” “VIA CRUCIS,” 
“AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS,” ETC. 


WITH A HUNDRED ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY 
HENRY BROKMAN 


VOL, I 


Neto Work 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Lt. 


1914 


All rights reserved 





—_—_—- - — 


ry.Reeearcb GO 4 IS” s1wchers. HOG, ay, 


TO MY FRIEND HENRY BROKMAN, TO WHOSE 
GENIUS I AM INDEBTED FOR THE DRAWINGS IN 
THIS BOOK, AND WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP IN 
SICILY AND THE SOUTH HAS LIGHTENED MANY 
LABOURS. 


TorRE San NicoLtA ARCELLA 


CALABRIA, 
August, 1900. 


312890 





Wav eWlas 


THE EARLIEST TIME 
THE GREEKS 


THE ROMANS 


OF CONTENTS 


VOLUME I 


PAGE 


26 
249 





— 


Pius RA TLONS = EN = fiir EE XE 


VOLUME I 


PAGE 
Etna at Sunrise ; : : : ‘ : I 
Isles of the Cyclops, near Catania . : : ; : F 
Isles of the Sirens, Gulf of Salerno . : : , 7 
Old Fortification in Manfredonia_. ; ; ; oe Jah 


Mare Piccolo at Taranto,— The Harbour of Ancient Tarentum 18 


Spring called the ** Fonte del Sole,” in a Grotto near Taranto 24 


Cape Palinuro, Gulf of Policastro. “ Sh) 
Ancient Aqueduct at Solmona in the Abruzzi, the birthplace 

of Ovid. - : : : Ao 
After Sunset on the Shore of Eastern Calabria : : so BPEL 
Aqueduct at Taranto, formerly Tarentum : : maiy 
Columns called the “ Tavole Paladine,” at Metaponto, formerly 

Metapontum_.. : : , oO! 
The Site of Sybaris . ‘ : : . : ’ : SAS 
Fortress of Charles the Fifth at Cotrone, formerly Crotona  . 65 
Temple of Hera, Capo Colonne, near Cotrone ; ; 07 
Fragment of the Ruins of Selinus, now Selinunto . : Pan Oo! 
Girl washing near Reggio, Calabria, formerly Rhegium . Oo 
The “ Gran Sasso d’ Italia” from Aquila . : ; :  Aiare: 
Eucalyptus Trees near the Site of Sybaris : : ; melts 
Old Well at Cotrone, formerly Crotona . : ;  alis 
Coin with the Head of Arethusa, Syracuse, about 400 B.c. - 120 
Map of Syracuse. : ; : : : : LON Le) 


X Illustrations in the Text 


Street of Ancient Tombs, Syracuse . 

Path under Rocks, Latomia dei Cappuccini, Syracuse 
Old Well in the Latomia dei Cappuccini, Syracuse . 
Peasant near Reggio, Calabria 

Straits of Messina off Rhegium, now Reggio, Calabria 


Garden of the Church of San Nicola, Girgenti, formerly Agri- 
gentum . ; 


A Sicilian Courtyard 

Street in Syracuse To-day 

Coin with the Head of Queen Philistis 

Peasant Woman of Monteleone 

On the Road at Girgenti 

Papyrus in the River Anapus, near Syracuse 
Amphitheatre at Syracuse : 
A Lonely Spot on the Shore, Eastern Calabria 
Castrogiovanni, formerly Henna 

Calascibetta at Sunset 

Castle of Aci Castello, near Catania 

Vesuvius, on the Day before the Eruption of May, 1990 . 
From the Highest Tier of the Theatre, Taormina 
Harbour of Malta 

Amantea, Western Calabria 

Rocca Imperiale, Eastern Calabria . 


PAGE 
14! 
148 
151 
163 
181 


187 
206 
214 
230 
241 
251 
262 


284 
296 
300 
318 
533 
348 
359 
368 
372 


rode th PHOLOGRAVURE PLATES 


VOLUME I 


Scylla_. : : : ; : Frontispiece 


FACING PAGE 


Map of Sicily, with Greek and English Names 
On the Outskirts of Giardini, below Taormina 
The Ruins of Selinus 

Temple of Segesta . 

Latomia dei Cappuccini, Syracuse . 

Ruined Rampart at Girgenti 


Cavern called the ‘“ Ear of Dionysius,” Latomia del Paradiso, 
Syracuse . 


Greek Theatre at Segesta 

Map of Italy and Sicily under Roman Rule 

Temple of Concord, Girgenti . 

Olive Trees in the Latomia dei Cappuccini, Syracuse 
Catacombs at Syracuse 

Shore, from the Theatre at Taormina 

In the Theatre at Taormina 


In the Temple of Neptune, Pestum 


xi 


I 


oo 
89 
92 
146 


160 


184 
225 
249 
283 
339 
357 
363 
ofS 
383 





monmhS CONSULTED, NOT INCLUD- 
NC ler\ ool. ALU ELORS 


AMARI. Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia. 

APRILE. Cronologia della Sicilia. 

Bryce. The Holy Roman Empire. 

CAPECELATRO. Storia di Napoli. 

CARINI. Gli Archivi e le Biblioteche di Spagna. 

Caruso. Bibliotheca Historica Regni Siciliz. 

Caruso. Storia di Sicilia, per cura di Gioacchino di Marzo. 

CRrONICA del Rey d’ Arago En Pere 1V. Lo Ceremoniés. (Catalan 
language. ) 

CrOnIcA del Rey En Pere per Bernat Desclot. (Catalan language.) 

CrONICA d’? En Ramon Muntaner. (Catalan language.) 

CuTERA. La Mafia e i Mafiusi. 

DeLarc. Les Normands en Italie. 

DOMINAZIONE ARABA IN SICILIA. (Translations from the Arabic.) 

EWALD. Gregorii I., Pape Registrum Epistolarum. 

GiBpBon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

Hoitm. Geschichte Siciliens im Alterthum. 

La LumiA. Storie Siciliane. 

LAVISSE ET RAMBAUD. Histoire Générale. 

Morso. Palermo Antico. 

MurRaATorRI. Annale d’ Italia. 

MuRATORI. Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. 

PRIVITERA. Storia di Siracusa. 

RITTER. History of Ancient Philosophy. (Morrison’s translation. ) 

RoeEtTH. Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie. 

ROGER DE HOVEDEN. Annals. (Bohn’s edition.) 

TESTA. De Vita et Rebus Gestis Gulielmi II. 

TOMACELLI. Storia di Napoli e Sicilia. 

ZuRITA. Anales de la Corona de Aragon. 


xiii 





























































































































































































































































































Gran Cratege™s 1 yvytcano g£ 
7] 
4h dE ake R E N O 
C, di Milazzo EB 
C go 
@ oO ? &. 
% : : . & % 
wo G e Milazz ce. < 
3.0 be OS, Mylai Bh ant 
4 C. 8. Vito 2% 2 “Sy Ror Meast = 
ees 1%, Lm, 2, wRometta Me Cal 
Me a) ranma - oN ‘alanna 
aut : SS Voces) MMi, KD “ Ss. Lucia” lex 
‘ ano S. SP rea SN oa tastife Out. O SS - 
ae Golfo di Castellammare o. Zonta “3, ee eS ‘Sue 0 AVaso 5 EMGelan % Sow Barcelona Sot Vite Ly Reggio : 
ame = $ 7 fy ‘\ i : Ss» 
1. ASINELLI xi git yor® aes %, es “Se Gi fen GN di-Brolo fee o Mecgina py Repelos basic bos ; 
AIGITHALLOS.? $i ort %, Qe: ee Se % Marco d’ Alunzio, “a Sw) io 
POOUCINNAS ‘ $ “a i Sy 2% ‘fe c 2S. S Alnor oR oy a ty, err ry Messina % came" nw 
T ' AY : ly? BEN =) ~% 2. eS pas thi eacguy UW ., ica i: Sclo 
EyAnzo + rapani NM cs a Cia % 23 2. a 8 2 ee ortorici gs Ye" 
ae repanonZsy poe RA hs fs Wi ii Ew "RQ, AN a ate al a anlarnene lay was 77 2 OG, ies ae BU Hopi dio | ues pe hake si 38° 
Xiga aol ine Hak A gl PT, eas : are, | 
Gur ae a\ sicily ippafh S. ae S Miseretth y ae) ne isin By nS J SS 
mm o- ius ee Ms NE re My 277 Me Hh 
ae ~ ‘Ji 7 vs arn Giontypey, Pv Pitd: Jwdnastratt id Pek 7 i, 1 ‘7: wv a R IS NAS i) y ASN WZ). Mapas ASayoca By C. aon sad SK, Melita 
xe Sy ZN eS ee Vii Wy = YM. = =H) 4,’ Hiyyfl a eukopetra Oeste 
FAVI ws < Sahar 103 x ona, wn seks LS ‘ye 3 en 3 5 XA ‘1 Mt, aw + OC. 8. Alessio 
; Ad SEEN. ae Uj Ms (is R POSS, Prancavillalyss 2 
i GRANDE EL Si, 8 fayna Grandes ce jn ue aS os ‘his He = iia Aleaiite rs By Ky Kokkynos 
LUNGA)@ o a as ee Madonie ig y Sv lee, Lay Wy Tisso? 5 Foe By. 
‘Se pranrat : 3%, ie i Al [oun ZI Re Resaro ae AY ae Rf Taprmina 
~ Y Th RY { a 
es a? AS BAW iy, Mig, be was a \ AN Ms Sa ee NVA A © Tauromenion 
‘ tt \) i éy 
Lipsey al ars sala ae ws Aly set 9 A AE 4, NI x7 li? = oe ', Soe 
PN by ae y ; Py) Tr, inae’s 
Marsala a y ans eu Ms, Uap ele yy i, < Z “omy Bettatias * lly z Lngyon?Z Br =: 4 
poe Sh 8 LPartianna. RNY Stat S ‘yfentella ps Fella. FN ye 4% < i, JANE, EE % 
vs s artanna I at bi li ie aon Ff, maatdli® = Z a cape Ay Ye Wiz = eo a 
1 ¥ BS = = sisi = o Bix mF 3 =e Bm, BIN 2 = | Yamos> ea tce SS STiarre 
Mestre’ Sok se" Har horn Genovard Hy NH OS hey Mie Altesina Cor» Age ux ; ) 
| Mazzara Pee argherit@yy WIPO &  achara’ Gy S 6, 
C. Feto ae allo Cagtelvetrano Sy = di Belicem, une Sale me ay Fiachara vag’ cm 0 Ames ~ HS mayne 
Sf Mazara Aeristia SSkbethaia7h py 9 ATR . uss hye bons tonto 
Canepobella Res Mong, fae Ey pale B Suisse? Mone te. iS: Filippov i asta ae ~ spin F 
Row. di Selinuntes, i\Pilert eS argiog | val en 2 ZN sng eason08 a Agyrion Kenton SX iS, Muria? “lo § he 2 Aaa (Fiume) 
Selty = 2 Any ee Forage % ran Moyne wGerthepive ee, Li 5s( Fiume hy 
: Sohal BU, oS. Bartolo o Ke mikos Triokala q Bo Ot Sr Caterin SEY Btn we, ni nt oripe, di, vA a Weolase Husoalucing 
Punta af Granitela Seek \, Kratas Caltabelto UZ 4, K stibome i Villarmosa\,S ) ee “Oasis evnnai y wg Sea “4 - shay Be FrnoO elpasso © oy, 
sburos : Be AE ERS € - ‘ w Castypgigvannt 4, si an q y Aci Castello 
Hi(G ale) Sciacca Ry Pine ZF am C. seo, ‘mini NS lee (aii *Pergusa, oe Hy “ : RRR hi ede ‘% bey y 
“abi , "OF wis f Ge 4 £ SS = ¢ dn, . . * 
as Acl ates oe " gy, YA OPN omg aii Sus op Fabic ergus: oPatpuarnet Hip antione ws} Misterbianco Fe Catania 1 
af y SS of 3 s ~ ¢ > 
6 g,. MO abo? He ybessys? Vay wy Wu iG NAF sos ee dif ep Vataldass #2 1& Caropepes, — Katane > 
. Ae sem Wi, FS" Serradifaleos wr Ss 
Aa Sselv x at hee Eraclea a Eeane REET ai Cae n 4 Simeto(@ ; 
} ° a Shi Aes TO z imeto (Giaretta 
ner gs? Makara TAGORG c tyme Je 3 h i 
ac - o Minoa ) 5 Se rinakia 3 » Martino 
M eo Heraxleta os f is UES: ° 7a es Arm Ritwvades onuct Gornalunga aithos? 2 
x S C £ N33 erina: 
Siculians $} % Op AniCat Ae Barra vines |Philosophiana <%XFor ASA" L, di Lentini Terias 
fo) St Petiliana .Sommia atino he = RY tae a oe uaa x2 oh 
2 aktorion? ssYo"%y = Palagonia oN: eh, Brucoli 
may aoe Calloniana ee gk Z % azar 2D S g, Cie (stn Miz Palike 9 ZR Lenti noo os Trotilon 
n 7 Za 4 te By Swi, ee) r 
eo wat ¥ Riest Eo i, g TN ey Yi laypagllineass.sui “ Leontino~~., M. mee S 
a og a Campobello 21 | rom (gs &, ‘Mena of nd? cope! eve, one Tauro 
gt? pe dis Licata at 4, Onliagirones 5 Mi Sign) F  qlast™™_paite’tus PP}IC. S. Groce 
2 H. Grecuzzo2 Lary ey A : a vil Marcelino Mylas E PAugusta Xiphenia 
S a 2 j ‘Mehetla Melitti; A Rov. di Mecara 
; Butera ee « y 
aa 
xe 
qv 
pu Ze san 
; Dy & BidiSTR 
2p, Sa et 
g® ey) > > 2 rakusa 
ae Ss eo ™% C2 3 ( . & 
y: 8 RAPER * rn ao ae Fs = ui “Pligzste- Aereide © ae) Sir acusa 
he ee a9) D Ak allat ° Gals; “¢¢ ‘Akrai) ee Pianhigrior 
ot & Ge <P ~ Biscari wl ; 
ee as a: = pry : 37° 
; é om C.(Murro di Porco @ 
: ? Comiso xy CC.’ Lognina 
Vittoria® © “7, = 
of ybla2 


dO fa Bene 


SCALES 


20 


ENGRAVED BY BORMAY & COsNiYs 


40 English Miles 


40 Italian Miles 





Longitude Kast of Paris 






C. Negro 


Rov. di Kamarinaé:. 
Oani 






v 


Modica Treloros 


Punta Secea’ Ji. VENDICARI 


O - poe { @ PHOINIKUS AY 
» Scaramia 
C, Bukre Pozzallo 
se Pach 
9 achynos 
Roy we C oe 
2: oO ‘ . Passero 
y . : 
¥ oi ©, DE CORRENT! 
12° 


13° 











z ale; Golfo di Castellammare Xt bay pete 2 S \ ol 
YF = Se 
iy IX ve, Sh 


Silo 


1. ASINELLI 
AIGITHALLOS.? 
PHORBANTIA as 

"EEKANG 
I. 








l rapani4: penne 
ANZO 
EVAN Drepanonaiy (Evy A) epee 


x iia Sony ra. + SS ( a ( Ka py i "oPiana de’ Gr 
; l S, Ginsdypets sto Ma 
Leta Z| ¥ 





ANA of : a eS 5 Ca: oT} 31 
+ GRANDE $ nites @ upored Co 
(CUNGA)R q Macella™ » 


iw 33 
ilybaion' : _, Gibelliia sre 


3 Dine 
‘any, we 


Partann 


Marsala 
| Akithios sou gl His ih 





Mon tevgyo° 


© Mar, ier it ne score 
Castelvetrano oe ai Bolton be ea Sule 
6 ky og denistia) 53 SS, 
Campobello £Y& hs 
Rov. di Selinunter, *\Pileri Meng, (Menfrici) 


Selinys Au oS. Bartolo 


$ a Sossios Kratas 
Punta di Granitola Wahiieoe 








Sciacca 








SiC iernys 


SCALES 





40 English Miles 





40 Italian Miles 

















ENGRAVED BY BORMAY & QOy.NiYs i 





ETNA AT SUNRISE 


The Rulers of the South 


In very early times, when demigods made history 
and myth together, heroic beings moved upon the 


southern land and sea, in shapes of beauty and of 
VOL, 1 I B 


2 - The Rulers of the South 


strength, sometimes of terror, that pursued each other, 
changing and interchanging forms, appearing and dis- 
appearing, rising from the waters as a mirage and 
sinking into the bosom of the earth, then springing 
into life again elsewhere in the more vivid day of a 
nearer reality, half human still but already mortal, to 
die at the last, to be buried in tombs that endure, and 
to leave names behind them which history can neither 
quite accept nor wholly overlook. 

First, ancient Kronos is the kindly god of the golden 
age in all Italy, but changes in Sicily to Baal-Moloch, 
grasping tyrant, devourer of human flesh, fortified 
against mankind in the high places of the earth; and 
he slays Ouranos, his father, whose blood falls as a 
fertilizing rain from heaven upon the burning Sicilian 
earth. Armed with the scythe, he rules in wrath, 
then fades from existence, and leaves his crooked 
weapon twice buried in the earth in Drepanon, the 
sickle of Western Trapani, and in Zancle, the wide 
reaping-hook of land that guards Messina from the 
southern storms. 

Poseidon next, his son, god of the Mediterranean 
Sea, smites his trident deep into the uncertain land. 
He is the father of many heroes, of Trinakros and 
Sikelos, whose names stuck fast, of giant Polyphemus, 
of the man-eating Lzestrygones, of Eryx, Aphrodite’s 
son; he is the father, too, of great Demeter, who 
fights forever with fiery Hephzestos for possession of 


The Earliest Time 3 


her rich inheritance, of Demeter, who first taught men 
to sow corn; while the nymph Aétna, high on her 
mountain throne, watches the eternal strife, forever 
umpire of a never-ending war. Still the fight for 
bread against fire is raging, and in the wild burnt 
lands between Randazzo and Bronté, the ‘thunder- 
town,’ the myth of Hephzstos and Demeter is truth 
still. 

From her springs the lovely fable-allegory of the 
seed hidden in the earth, dead half the year and half 
the year alive again. For of Demeter, by Zeus, was 
born Kore, the ‘Maiden,’ the girl Persephone, who 
played in Sicilian fields with maiden Athene and 
maiden Artemis, and each chose a playground of 
her own. Athene took Himera, on the north, for 
hers, and on the east Artemis chose Ortygia in the 
sea; but Kore loved best the fruitful land of Enna 
in the island’s heart, where violets grew so close and 
sweet that the Huntress’s own hounds could follow no 
scent there, and the chase ended among the flowers. 
There Kore wandered, gathering the violets to make 
a dark blue mantle for her father Zeus, the sky-king; 
but though the meadows were so fair, the gate of 
Hades was close at hand, among the trees at the foot 
of Enna’s hill, and thence dark Pluton, master of hell, 
watched her with glowing eyes, and sprang forward 
at last and took her in his arms to bear her away. 
But when he was hard by Syracuse, the nymph Kyane, 


A The Rulers of the South 


Kore’s playmate, leapt lightly from the woods and 
stood in the way as he rushed along, and she prayed 
with all her heart for her friend’s freedom, but could 
not move the raging god to mercy; so she sank to 
earth and was lost in her own tears, which made a 
deep translucent well, the most beautiful of all springs 
in the world to this day. After that Demeter went 
out to seek for her lost daughter, and lighted A¢*tna’s 
fires for a torch, but could not find her, for Kore had 
eaten the seed of the pomegranate in Pluton’s house, 
and was wedded, and could only come back for half 
the year. Therefore Zeus gave her Sicily for a wed- 
ding gift. By this is fabled the hiding of the seed in 
the earth, and its return to the upper world in leaf 
and flower. 

Next came mysterious Deedalus, art and skill in 
person, flying before angry Minos, king of Crete, 
touching Sicily first and wandering from island to 
island, beautifying each and leaving in each some 
stable work to tell that he had passed there; while 
the Sicanians burned his enemies’ ships, and drowned 
King Minos in the bath, burying him deep, and build- 
ing above his grave their temple to Aphrodite. De- 
dalus built great reservoirs and impregnable cities, 
treasuries for kings and temples for gods, whose 
images he carved in rare wood, and set them moving 
with cunning devices hidden within. So, when bread 


had first been won, and when husbandry had grown 


The Earliest Time 5 


strong in peace, thought and art came likewise, that 
Sicily might be a perfect home for men. The great 
legend of Troy embraced the island then. When old 
Laomedon had sacrificed his daughter Hesione to atone 
for his broken word, many Trojans fled, or sent away 
their children secretly, lest like should befall them. 
Hippotes sent his child Egesta to Sicily, and she loved 





ISLES OF THE CYCLOPS, NEAR CATANIA 


Crimisos and bore him Acestes, who went back when 
he was fully grown, and fought for Troy, but returned 
again and brought with him Elymos, son of Anchises ; 
and this Elymos left his name to the children of 
Acestes, who were called Elymians. But some say 
that these were the Elamites of the Bible. 

Soon after that came great Ulysses, wandering by 
sea, when he had dragged his unwilling companions 
from the shores of the Lotus land; and first he came 


to the eastern shore of Sicily, where Polyphemus dwelt 


6 The Rulers of the South 


among cliffs and caves, pasturing huge sheep, and he 
was taken with his companions by the giant; but he 
blinded him and escaped with those who still lived; 
and the Cyclops tore up great boulders, that were like 
hills, and sent them whirling after the Greeks, but 
could not hit them, being quite blind; so the rocks fell 
into the sea and became three islets, fast and firm to 
this day. One of them, moreover, is like a vast mon- 
ster’s head rising above the water, and where the eye 
should be there is a round aperture, through which the 
light shines brightly from side to side; for which reason 
it may well be that the Cyclops was made a one-eyed 
creature in the imagination of early men, as any one 
may understand who will go to Aci Castello or to 
Trezza and look at the rocks for himself. 

Thence Ulysses sailed by the southern coast, round 
Sicily, touching here and there, and landing on islands 
where many adventures befell him, and along the 
Italian shore, so that his name and fame linked Sicily 
and Southern Italy with Greece. 

Next, still from Troy, came Trojans with Aeneas and 
his fleet, wandering hither and thither, and founding 
the great temple of Idalian Venus, of Venus Erycina, 
on Mount Eryx, named after Aphrodite’s son; and then 
Orestes came, crossing to Sicily when he had purged 
himself of his crime in Rhegium, and he built the 
temple of Artemis in Myle, which is Milazzo, to hold 
the sacred image he had brought from far away. 


The Earliest Time FI 


So gods and heroes came and went, and left their 
names upon the south, and some of them found their 
last resting-places there; and tradition grew out of 
myth, and history was moulded upon tradition, till the 
legends would have filled volumes, and gradually con- 





ISLES OF THE SIRENS, GULF OF SALERNO 


centrated themselves toward the point of transition at 
which fable becomes fact. Out of it all results clearly 
the main truth, that from very early times the rich 
south was a possession for which several races fought 


one with another, Orientals, Greeks, and peoples who 


8 The Rulers of the South 


had come down from Italy, and who were afterwards 
driven back by degrees into the inner country, the 
Sicanians and the Sicelians. 

The most learned modern historian of Sicily, Adolf 
Holm, has proved almost conclusively that these two 
peoples were of common and Italian origin, and came 
in succession from their Latian home, somewhere near 
Anxur, which is now Terracina. The Sicanians came 
first, in small bands of wanderers, leaving many at 
home, whence afterwards arose the confusion of names, 
by which the stronger Sicelians were sometimes called 
Sicanians, but when the latter sailed down in force 
and took possession, the confusion ceased. The first 
comers had intrenched themselves in strong passes and 
had built fortresses on inaccessible heights, as men do 
who know that they may be easily destroyed. But the 
Sicelians came in hordes, driven from their homes by 
the vast immigration of the Pelasgian race when it 
moved westward and descended into Italy. They were 
Latins, speaking a Latin language, closely allied with 
that of the Romans, for they called a hare ‘leporis’ 
and a basin ‘katinon,’ and they named a certain river 
‘Gela’ because the hoar frost settled along the banks 
more thickly than elsewhere. And so, as Holm says, 
the Sicelians are proved by their language to have 
been closely connected with the Latins and the Oscans, 
and descended from the common Pelasgian stock; and 


it is clear that they had wandered from the Hemus 


s 


The Earliest Time 9 


to the Apennines, before they reached the island to 
which they gave their name, and that in their immigra- 
tion they had overrun and filled the southern mainland 
of Italy. Once there, they built all those early cities of 
which remains exist that are not manifestly Greek; 
they built ships and sailed out on marauding expedi- 
tions, and some of them even attempted to plunder the 
Egyptians, joining themselves with Tyrrhenians and 
Sardinians, Achzans and Lycians, as is proved by a 
hieroglyphic inscription found in Thebes, which tells 
how two hundred and fifty Sicelians were slain, under 
King Merenptah, and their hands were struck off and 
brought to him, twelve hundred years before our era 
began. It is sure, also, that even for centuries after 
the Greeks had settled in Sicily, the Sicelians dwelt 
there still, a flourishing and active race. They were 
therefore the first permanent element of a Sicilian pop- 
ulation, and most probably of the south Italian people 
also; for Thucydides says that Italus, from whom Italy 
was supposed to have been named, was king of the 
Sicelians, and Aristotle states that he taught his pas- 
toral people the more civilized arts of agriculture. 
Three epochs stand out from the chaos of myth, 
legend, and history: the development of farming by 
the Sicelians, about 1200 B.c., the introduction of com- 
merce with the Phoenicians after that time, and the 
gradual growth of a higher civilization under the 
Greeks, from the time of their landing in the eighth 


IO The Rulers of the South 


century before the Christian era, until the Carthaginian 
or Punic wars with Rome, and the subsequent wreck 
of Greek art and thought under the atrocious governor- 
ship of Verres, between 73 and 71 B.c., during which, 
with the connivance of his father, the senator, he pil- 
laged all Sicily at his will. 

The Roman rule became in the fourth century the 
rule of Constantinople, and next in history, when the 
Goths had ruled for a time, the Arabs began to take 
Sicily, in the year 827 a.p.; the Normans came after 
them, completing their conquest of the island in Iogr1, 
and through them the German Imperial house of 
Hohenstaufen, reigning from the fifth year before the 
preaching of the first Crusade, until the downfall of 
the Ghibellines. in 1268. Then the French, under 
Charles of Anjou, during the few years that ended in 
the Sicilian Vespers, in 1282, after which the Sicilians 
chose for their king Peter of Aragon, and because 
both he and Charles of Anjou continued afterwards 
to call themselves kings of Sicily, the two kingdoms 
of Sicily and Naples became known from that time as 
the ‘two Sicilies,’ and were still so called under Fer- 
dinand the Catholic, after Naples was annexed to 
Aragon, and both became Spanish monarchies. In 
1700 began the war of the Spanish succession, after 
which Victor Amadeus of Savoy was king of Sicily 
for a time, until Sicily and Naples were again united 
under Charles the Third of the house of Bourbon, 


The Earliest Time II 


Last of all, in 1860, the two Sicilies were united to 
the modern Kingdom of Italy. 

All these, through nearly three thousand years, 
were Rulers of the South, in turn, Sicelians, Phoenicians, 
Greeks; Romans, Byzantines, Goths, and Arabs; Nor- 
mans, German Emperors, and French; Spaniards of 
Aragon and of Bourbon, and Savoyard Kings of Italy. 
Every great race that has won rights on the shores 
of the Mediterranean Sea has, without an exception, 
sooner or later called the south its own, and has left 
the broad mark of full possession on the country, 
where it may still be seen, sometimes grotesque and 
sometimes grand, now rough, now beautiful, now vulgar, 
but always very strong and clear, as if the south had 
been a most cherished possession which each hoped 
to hold forever. There is no part of Europe which 
has been dominated by a greater number of different 
races, and none where each has left such deep traces 
of its domination. The Goths and Vandals are the 
only people who ever held the south for a time and 
left no sign of their presence; but their holding was 
short, and their occupation was followed by a disap- 
pearance so sudden that their brief rule never earned 
the designation of a kingdom. 

The Italian south differs in one prime condition from 
all the other countries that open upon the Southern 
Sea. It has never at any time been the independent 
arbitrator of Europe or of civilization, and it has been 


12 The Rulers of the South 


held in succession by those powers that have ruled 
the rest, or most strongly influenced them, from very 
early times. Greece held it, and Imperial Rome, the 
wide-spreading Arab and Saracen domination, the all- 
grasping Normans, the Holy Roman Empire, and 
France and Spain. It has never been the source of 
an individual power that began in it, spread from 
it, and enveloped others. It has lacked strength of 
its own from the beginning, it has lacked the genius 
without which strength breeds monsters, it has been 
wanting in the original character which bears modi- 
fication but resists extirpation, it has produced no 
race which another has not been able to enslave; 
one people after another has taken possession of it, 
each amalgamating in some degree with the last, but 
the welding of races has not become a great race, 
nor has any first element outlasted and outruled the 
others. It has been the prize of contending warriors, 
it has been the playground of magnificent civilizations, 
but it has neither acted the part of conqueror itself, 
nor has it ever produced a civilization of its own. It 
has resembled Greece and Rome, Arabia and Spain, 
in language, institutions, and manners, but its people 
have never gone forth in the flesh or in the spirit to 
impose upon others a resemblance to themselves. In 
the balance of the world’s forces Sicily has been 
feminine and reproductive rather than masculine and 


creative; endowed with supreme natural beauty, she 


The Earliest Time 13 


has been loved by all, she has favoured many, and 
she has borne sons to a few, sons such as Archimedes 
and Theocritus, Dionysius and Agathocles, King Roger 
and Frederick Second of Hohenstaufen, of Greek, Nor- 
man, and Norman-German blood. But if we ask for 
a great man whom we may call a Sicilian, we must 
ask what Sicilians were, and we shall receive different 
answers in different ages,— Greeks, Arabs, Normans, 
Spaniards, and Italians have all been Sicilians at one 
time or another. 

At the first glance it might be thought that the result 
in history must be confusing and often disconnected, 
breaking off at a point to begin again at another with 
little or no apparent connexion, so as to present a 
series of detached episodes without logical sequence, 
and consequently without consecutive interest. But 
this is not at all the truth. That has been the case 
in some parts of the world, as in the plains of 
Central Asia, where one horde of invaders has _ suc- 
ceeded and exterminated another of which it knew 
nothing, learned nothing, and desired nothing except 
plunder. The connexion between the Chinese Mon- 
gols and the Turanian Tartars, for instance, is not any 
closer, beyond the bounds of China, than that between 
white men and red Indians in America. But in the 
story of Sicily the continuous, reasonable cause of 
change lies in the unmatched attraction of Sicily, a 
charm so strong and lasting as to be a source of 


14 The Rulers of the South 


interest in itself, so that we may figure the island as 
the undying heroine of an unending romance, wooed, 
won, and lost by many lovers who have met and 
fought and have conquered, or have been vanquished 
in the struggle for the possession of her beauty. 
Sicily has been the Helen of a European Epos. 

The southern mainland has for the most part 
served only as a stepping-stone to the conquest of 
the island. Pyrrhus, called over by the Greeks to 
help them, crossed the straits; Alaric meditated the 
passage, but withdrew, and Genseric took Sicily from 
Africa, but Roger the Norman and Charles of Anjou 
went over as conquerors of all the south. Yet in 
many respects Southern Italy has never been far 
behind the most coveted spot in the Mediterranean . 
there is great natural beauty in the mainland and 
great wealth of soil, and such climate as is hardly to 
be found elsewhere; there, too, the Greeks built 
marvellous temples to their gods, and there thinkers, 
philosophers, poets, and soldiers have been reared of 
successive races; Horace himself was of the south, 
and so was Zeno of Elea, founder of the great 
Eleatic school. Tarentum lost all manliness and 
vigour in a delicacy of thought and manners that 
outdid the refinements of Syracuse, and the civiliza- 
tion of Greece trained its growth of beauty like a 
climbing rose from tower to tower. But in spite of 


all, the mainland never rivalled Sicily in art or 


The Earliest Time 15 


thought or war; in the vast construction of empires 
Lucania, Apulia, Calabria, were never names to con- 


jure with, nor were they ever numbered among the 





we wD, 


OLD FORTIFICATION IN MANFREDONIA 


kingdoms of fable, wherein godlike shapes of terror 
and of loveliness figured the drama of nature in 


immortal allegory. They were not divided from the 


16 The Rulers of the South 


world by the mystery of the moving sea nor hidden 
from it by the morning mist of the straits, nor brought 
to it in the magic mirage of the Fairy Morgana. 
There was no secret in them for men to learn at 
risk of life, there was no marvel in the thought of 
them; they were among the world’s commonplaces, 
and every one might go to them and live in them who 
chose. It was not until the middle ages substituted 
romantic tragedy for classic myth that the inacces- 
sible mountains of the south were filled with a sort of 
mysterious interest which they have not yet wholly lost. 

The story of the Rulers of the South is as much 
a history of places as of thé persons whose character 
marked them and left them as they are, since almost 
throughout history it was the nature of the places 
themselves which played so great a part in the lives 
of those who coveted them, grasped them, and ruled 
them, or who dwelt in them and made them famous. 
We cannot easily imagine Syracuse without Dionysius 
the Elder, nor Dionysius without Syracuse, nor would 
any one ever think of Theocritus as a poet of the 
mainland. The great story of Roger the Norman 
moves towards Palermo as the sun to the splendour 
of its setting, and Charles of Anjou is better remem- 
bered by the awful Vespers of the Church of the 
Holy Ghost than by the long life of struggle, con- 
quest, and murder which won him a kingdom and 


founded a long-lived dynasty. 


The Earliest Time 17 


It is true that in such a narrative it is necessary 
to return again and again to the same places, and to 
cross the same ground many times; but in successive 
ages the cities of the south, while many of them have 
kept their names, have so changed that it is hard to 
recognize them as the same; and each of them is 
therefore not one but many, all of which must be 
seen in imagination and understood, as far as pos- 
sible, in order to form a clear and reasonable idea of 
the whole as it was and is. 

Before going any further, however, it is necessary 
that the reader should have a general conception of 
the extraordinary country in which the events took 
place which are hereafter to be narrated. 

Southern Italy is little more than a range of volcanic 
mountains which rise abruptly from the sea on the 
west side and descend on the east in a succession of 
fertile tablelands, the lowest of which is a vast fore- 
shore only slightly raised above the level of the 
Adriatic. There is not a single natural harbour, 
really deserving the name, on the whole coast of the 
southern mainland, from the Gulf of Naples on the 
west to Manfredonia on the eastern side. The nearest 
approach to one is perhaps Tarentum, and it early 
owed its prosperity to the nature of the land, which 
there afforded tolerable shelter to large vessels before 
any harbour was constructed. Even at the present 
day there is no safe port for large ships between 


VOL, I Cc 


18 The Rulers of the South 


Naples, or Stabian Castellamare, close by it, and the 
straits. Messina, once called Zancle, the beautiful 
‘sickle’ on the Sicilian side, was therefore the natural 
place for all vessels to put in that sailed round the 
coast. 

At the extremity of the range which thus forms 
Southern Italy, and divided from it by a channel little 


more than two miles wide, lies Sicily, a mountainous, 





MARE PICCOLO AT TARANTO, — THE HARBOUR OF ANCIENT TARENTUM 


three-cornered island over five hundred miles in circum- 
ference by straight lines, and over six hundred, if one 
closely follows the irregular coast. Viewed from the 
sea, the island appears almost everywhere as a vast 
assemblage of rocky peaks which often fall abruptly 
away in huge cliffs and bluffs. Only on parts of the 
eastern and southern side do the hills recede some 
distance so that rich plains open to the sea; but all 


round the coast the mountains are broken at intervals 


The Earliest Time 19 


by deep valleys that lead to others at a higher level 
in the interior, and there are more safe natural harbours 
on the northern and eastern sides of the island, from 
Trapani at the western extremity to Syracuse near the 
southeastern corner, than are to be found on an equal 
extent of coast line in any part of the world. The 
history of Sicily has been largely the history of those 
harbours and of those who held them; and as the size 
and draught of ships increased with the development 
of navigation under the Romans, after the Punic wars, 
the importance of the harbours grew likewise, while 
the cities on the southern side that possessed at most 
half-sheltered sandy beaches on which small vessels 
could be hauled up high and dry, steadily lost value, 
and did not recover until the construction of artificial 
harbours in modern times supplied what was deficient 
in nature. 

The fertility of Sicily is proverbial, and seems 
incredible when one considers how large a part of the 
island consists of high mountains. It is hard for one 
bred in the north to realize that in southern latitudes 
a mountain five thousand feet high may be richly culti- 
vated to its very summit; it is even harder to under- 
stand that the climate and soil are such that certain 
plants bear two crops in the year without exhausting 
the land, after three thousand years of cultivation; 
it is hardest of all, perhaps, to believe that the old- 
fashioned methods of agriculture, originally introduced 


20 The Rulers of the South 


by #the “Greeks, are really the best adapted to the 
country, as well as to the genius of a people possessed 
of unbounded industry and vast traditional experience, 
but wholly unlearned in the ways of modern science. 

Let it be considered that out of six millions of acres, 





¥3 


LIGHTHOUSE AT COLOMBAIA, HARBOUR OF TRAPANI 


barely one hundred and fifty thousand are barren ; that 
the soil will bear anything, from wheat and barley to 
the orange, the lemon, the date palm, and the banana, 
from the papyrus to the manna-ash, from cotton and 
sumach to the carob and the Indian fig; that at a 


short distance below the surface lie the most valuable 


The Earliest Time 21 


sulphur mines in the world, as well as excellent mines 
of rock salt; that the finest fisheries in the whole 
Mediterranean exist upon the coast; and finally that 
the most valuable coral is found in the same waters. 
Consider these few facts and it becomes plain that 
Sicily is one of the richest islands in the world, well 
worth the endless struggle for its possession that has 
been waged by a dozen different races since the be- 
ginning of all history. There is probably not to be 
found anywhere an equal area of land of the same 
value, not containing mines of diamonds, gold, or 
silver. The mainland opposite is very different. The 
plains to the eastward are indeed prosperous agri- 
cultural regions, but they are nowhere as fruitful as 
the island, nor do they produce any such variety of 
crops; and the mountains of Southern Calabria con- 
_sist for the most part of barren rocks among which 
a few herds of goats can hardly find a precarious 
pasture. Sicily has been called the granary of Rome 
and the garden of the Mediterranean; no such epithets 
have ever been applied to Calabria or Apulia. 

It is commonly said that the population of the 
eastern and southern portions of the island is of 
Greek descent, while the strongest traces of the Arab 
race are found in the central and western parts, and 
ina general way the statement is true. It is true 
also that the predominating type on the southern 
mainland is Greek rather than Latin. Both in Sicily 


22 The Rulers of the South 


and on the mainland there are still villages where 
only Greek is spoken and Italian is learned at school 
as a foreign language; and in the Maltese islands, 
only sixty miles south of Sicily, the modern tongue 
is Arabic, so far as it can be said to be anything 
definite. It is not more remarkable that Arabic 
should have wholly disappeared from Italian territory 
than that it should have been altogether lost in 
lower Spain. The absence of a social constitution in 
the Arab nation is the reason for the short endur- 
ance of its language, manners, and faith wherever it 
has become subject to a people more advanced in 
this respect. It has left us much of its art, and its 
profound genius laid the foundations of modern sci- 
ence, in mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy; but 
it has left nothing of itself behind it, and it is much 
harder for any one who has not lived in the East to 
evoke even a faint picture of Arab life in Palermo, 
than it is to call up very vividly the sights of Greek 
Syracuse under Dionysius or Agathocles. The point 
is one that deserves the consideration of the student 
of ethics, but it is worth noticing that the same truth 
applies to the Semitic Phoenicians, who, perhaps, did 
more for civilization at large than all the Pharaohs 
together, but whose surviving image in the imagi- 
nation of modern man is as vague as that of 
the Egyptians is bright and sharply defined. We 
may recall one more striking instance in the Goths, 


The Earliest Time 23 


another people of whom it cannot be said that they 
had a definite social constitution, who held all Italy 
for a hundred years, and left few signs of their pres- 
ence after them except the graves in which they 
were laid. 

The main influences that have worked upon the 
south have been Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Norman, 
of which the Roman is the one least strongly notice- 
able at the present day, and even, perhaps, in earlier 
centuries. For, in the south, the Romans themselves 
lost character, and their decided taste for Greek. art 
and manners hellenized them into insignificance. 
When their reign was over, the Goths dominated 
them and the Arabs made slaves of them. They 
had accepted and imitated all they had found, and 
they were themselves wiped out of social existence 
by those who conquered them; yet their works re- 
main, often gigantic and sometimes not without a 
certain borrowed Greek grace, and we have no more 
difficulty in fancying how they lived and ruled and 
worked in Agrigentum, than in Rome itself. Yet, 
to speak figuratively and familiarly, we do not ‘see’ 
the Romans when we think of Sicily, excepting per- 
haps Verres and his train of satellites, and though 
we must follow their history, we do not wish to ‘see’ 
them more than is necessary to an understanding of 
their position in the succession of the rulers. We 
are chiefly concerned with the Greeks, the Arabs, 


24 The Rulers of the South 


and the Normans. That far-reaching Spanish domi- 
nation which attained the height of its power in the 
sixteenth century was a part of modern history upon 
which the limits of this work will not allow us to dwell. 


What has here been said by way of introduction 


shall not afterwards be repeated. The sum of it, in 





SPRING CALLED THE “FONTE DEL SOLE,”’? IN A GROTTO NEAR 
TARANTO 


brief, is this: For three thousand years Sicily has 
been looked upon as the fairest among all the richly 
endowed lands that border on the Mediterranean Sea 
or lie as islands within it, a sort of earthly paradise, 
to obtain which no sacrifice could be thought too 
great; its claim to be so esteemed can be established 


The Earliest Time . 25 


by the short proof of any thoughtful man’s first 
glance, even to the present day; its history is the 
narrative of fierce struggles fought by great and 
manly races for its possession, and is told in monu- 
ments and ruins still to be seen. It is of all lands 
the one in which the most enthralling romance is 
interwoven with the most stirring fact, for it has 
always been the debatable country where fact has 
met romance and vied with it for supremacy. It “is 
much talked of, yet few travellers visit it, and those 
who do so see it through much misunderstanding and 
often at great disadvantage. Its history is confused 
by an enormous number of small details, and by such 
endless accounts of insignificant personages and of 
minor actions, that the main stream of interest is 
diverted into a thousand channels where no single 
rivulet has much strength or beauty left; and some- 
times all the channels are quite dry. For Sicily has 
been the favourite ground of the specialist for a 
long time, and in the specialist's minute work the 
smallest detail may possess for him the very highest 
importance. 

Iteiss the writers aim, in this book, to.-give a 
simple and true account of the successive domina- 
tions by which Sicily and the south of Italy have 
sometimes prospered and sometimes suffered from 
the days of the early Greek settlers down to the estab- 
lishment of the house of Aragon. 


26 The Rulers of the South 


The Greeks 


Ir is no wonder that the Greeks were seamen and 
wanderers on the sea. With little more than twice 
as much land as Sicily, Greece has a coast line equal 
to that of all Spain and Portugal together.. More- 
over, every strong race that has reached the sea in the 
migration of peoples has sooner or later attempted to 
sail westward, like Ulysses in his last voyage, beyond 
the baths of all the western stars, and the Greeks 
were almost driven from their own shore by the press 
of those behind them, when their little country was 
filled to overflowing. So they began to spread and 
multiply in the islands of the Mediterranean, and cer- 
tain of the bolder among them reached Italy and 
passed the straits, whence, sailing up the dangerous 
western coast, they came to the safe waters of Cume, 
protected from storms by the island of Ischia; and 
there they founded a colony which was the begin- 
ning of Naples. Some of them, it is said, turned 
pirates and found their way back to Sicily. 

They were very perfect men, and could do all and 
bear all that could be done and borne by human 
flesh and blood. Taking them altogether they were 
the most faultlessly constructed human beings that 
ever lived, and they knew it, for they worshipped 
bodily beauty and strength, and they spent the lives 
of generations in the cultivation of both. They were 


The Greeks 27 


fighting men, trained to use every weapon they knew, 
they were boxers and wrestlers, athletes, runners and 
jumpers, and drivers of chariots; but above all, they 
were seamen, skilled at the helm, quick at handling 
sails, masters of the oar, and fearless navigators. when 
half of all navigation led sooner or later to certain 
death. For though they loved life, as only the strong 
and the beautiful can love it, and though they looked 
forward to no condition of perpetual bliss beyond, 
but only to the shadowy place where regretful phan- 
toms flitted in the gloom as in the twilight of the 
Hebrew Sheol, yet they faced dying as fighters always 
have and always will, with desperate hands and a 
quiet heart. 

Their ships were small craft, much more like the lit- 
tle vessels in which the Greeks and Sicilians sail to-day, 
than those are like the vessels of the ocean. The first 
condition for safety was that their ships might be easily 
hauled up high and dry on any sandy beach, by means 
of such gear as they could carry with them; the 
second, that they should be very swift under the oar. 
The Norsemen who reached the Western Ocean 
needed the same qualities in their vessels; hence the 
resemblance between the old viking’s ship and the 
southern felucca of our own time. Both are long, nar- 
row, and of small draught, flat-bottomed amidships, yet 
sharp as a knife both fore and aft. The Greek ship, 
like the Norseman’s, carried but one mast and one 


28 The Rulers of the South 


great sail that was furled whenever the wind was not 
free, so that the only means of motion lay in the 
sweeps, steadily swung and pulled by free men or 
slaves, as the case might be, sometimes from dawn to 
sunset. 

Men rarely put to sea in one ship alone for any dis- 
tant voyage. They sailed out in little fleets of ten, or 
even twenty sail, well knowing that some should not 
come home, and trusting in the number of their vessels 
to save some of their companions from death by drown- 
ing. As Holm quietly observes, when speaking of 
Ulysses, men did not travel for pleasure in those 
days. 

When the Greek sailors were not pirates who got a 
living by robbing the Phoenician traders, they traded 
themselves, from Greece to Asia Minor and among all 
the rich Greek islands. They loaded their little ships 
on shore, covered the cargo with ox-hides battened 
down in the narrow water-ways to keep the stuff dry, 
they launched their vessels with the cargo in them, and 
they lived on deck, sleeping as they could in the open 
air, or making awnings of skins when they could 
anchor for the night in some natural harbour, or when 
with infinite labour they were obliged to beach their 
vessels on lonely shores before a coming storm. It 
was a rough life, and often they had to fight in self- 
defence, when weather-bound in barbarous places; 
but most men carried their lives in their hands in 


The Greeks 29 


those times, and few looked forward to dying of 
old age. 

A certain Theocles, whom some call Thucles, an 
Athenian, traded with Italy in the eighth century 





CAPE PALINURO, GULF OF POLICASTRO 


before Christ, and no doubt had been as far as Cume, 
where the Greeks had settled. But neither he nor any 
other Greeks had landed in Sicily, for the Sicelians had 
a bad name in the south, and it was said that they 


devoured human flesh and destroyed every one who 


30 The Rulers of the South 


tried to land upon their shores, so that other men left 
them in peace for a long time; and it is most likely 
that the Phcenicians, who traded with them, and even 
had settlements in Malta, and perhaps in Western 
Sicily, and who themselves offered up human sacrifices, 
spread this tale through the East to frighten off other 
trading folk. 

But Theocles, the merchant, with his little fleet of 
vessels, was sailing near the straits one summer day, 
hugging the Italian shore, when the northeast wind 
came upon him, suddenly and violently, as it does in 
those waters, and he could not beat up against it to an 
anchorage under the land, but was obliged to run 
before it, towards Sicily; for it was wiser to take the 
risk of being eaten by the Sicelians than to face certain 
drowning in vessels that would not lie to ina gale. So 
he wore his ships to the wind under such sail as he 
dared carry and ran for the opposite land with a heavy 
sea following. It is very likely that two or three of his 
fleet were swamped and sank with all on board, though 
a felucca will run safely before weather that would be 
dangerous to many larger craft. Theocles offered 
prayers to Apollo, and kept the helm up. 

Seeing that the wind was northeast, and that Sicily 
was a lee shore, he knew that his chance of safety and 
life lay in running under the only little headland that 
juts out from that part of the coast, and he succeeded 
in making the shelter in time, before the wind shifted to 


The Greeks 31 


the eastward. The sea broke over him just as he 
rounded the point, but its force drove him on and into 
smooth water, where he came to and let go both 
anchors. One by one his companions followed him and 
anchored alongside, and the first Greeks proceeded to 
land, where they afterwards built Naxos and Taurome- 
nium, on the soft beach of yellow sand below the little 
town now called Taormina, which many say is the most 
beautiful spot in the whole world. 

It is not possible, as some traditions say, that Theo- 
cles should have landed in the sandy cove under Cape 
Schiso, and should have built his altar to Apollo on the 
spot where Saint Pancras’s statue now stands; for the 
only storm which could have driven him across from 
Italy to the Sicilian shore was a northeaster; an east- 
erly or southeasterly gale would have either swamped 
him or sent him up the straits, and when the wind is in 
the northeast, Cape Schiso affords no shelter, though 
there is smooth water a mile to the northward under 
Cape Sant’ Andrea, and a little islet there protects the 
beach. So Theocles must have landed there, and there 
he doubtless proceeded to beach his vessels, heavy 
laden as they were, well knowing that the wind would 
shift to the dangerous southeast before the bad weather 
was over. It is most likely that he built his altar on 
the island, since he feared the Sicelians, and would feel 
safer if protected from them even by a narrow bit of 
shallow water; and on it he and his companions sacri- 


Ba The Rulers of the South 


ficed with a little meal and wine, which was all they 
had, and they prayed that their lives might be spared, 
not dreaming that they should reach Greece again in 
safety, and return a second time, and build a city which 
should endure for ages, and be the near forerunner of 
a vast Greek colonization. 

Instead of a race of cannibals, rushing down from 
the hills to kill them for food,-the Greeks found a 
peaceable farmer folk, well satisfied with themselves 
and others, who sauntered down to the shore and eyed 
the weather-bound strangers with benevolent curiosity. 
From a distance they must have seen their ships, and 
understood at once that these were not of Phoenician 
build; and they could see too, before they descended 
to the shore, that the newcomers were neither pirates 
nor soldiers, but peaceable merchants driven in from 
the sea for shelter. It is easy to fancy the distrust of 
Theocles and his companions, and the simple plan they 
followed; how they allured the Sicelians by holding up 
specimens of their merchandise, coloured stuffs, glass 
beads, and bits of tinsel-ware that caught the eye, just 
as English sailors made friends of South Sea islanders 
two thousand years later. The Greeks could not speak 
the Sicelian tongue, but they conversed in the universal 
dialect of all commercial enterprise, the language of 
exchange, and for their wares they obtained fresh sup- 
plies, and by and by the natives sat down by the Greek 
camp fires while the great storm lasted, and they ate 
and drank together and talked by signs. 


The Greeks 33 


Sitting there on the beach below Taormina, and wan- 
dering along to the southward, the strangers saw the 
rich foreshore full of trees and running springs of good 
water; their eyes followed the stubble fields up the 
rising ground, where the plentiful corn had last been 
harvested, to the vinelands beyond, where the scarlet 
leaves still clung to the gnarled vine-stocks after the 
vintage; further up there were silver-green olives, and 
higher still the rich, dark foliage of carob trees, and 
all was very fertile and good. They bought wine also 
of the Sicelians, which was strong and almost black, 
and had a flavour of its own, unlike all other wines. 
They sacrificed at sunrise and at evening, but not 
every day; and the Sicelians stood apart at a little 
distance and watched how the strangers dealt with their 
strange gods, and listened to the musical Greek voices 
when they sang a hymn to Phcebus Apollo. But the 
Greeks looked over at the vast smoking mountain to the 
southward and dared not wander far in that direction, 
lest the fire god should be angry with them, though the 
Sicelians smiled and tried to make them understand 
that there was no danger; for Ulysses seemed as real 
and well remembered to Theocles as Columbus seems 
to us; and the Athenians believed that blind Polyphe- 
mus still wandered, bellowing for light, about the foot 
of Etna, and that the smoke they saw still came from 
Vulcan’s smithy, and that all manner of monstrous 
and half godlike beings dwelt in the little valleys round 


VOL. I D 


34 The Rulers of the South 


about. So Theocles would not let his companions 
wander far away. But in the evening, when the Sice- 
lian farmers had gone to their dark huts, and the 
Greeks lay on skins around the blazing camp fire on 
the beach, while the southerly storm howled far over- 
head from over the mountains, they told each other 
that the land was good and the people mild, and that 
a few hundred Greeks could easily hold their own 
there, if only they could get possession of the first hill 
above the shore, and a little to the northward, on which 
Taormina now stands. There would be little difficulty 
about that, since the Sicelians dwelt mostly in the val- 
leys. Their real danger was from Polyphemus and 
the Lzstrygones, and Hepheestos, and they therefore 
sacrificed continually to Apollo, the protector of colo- 
nists and the giver of victory. 

The storm may have lasted a week, and when it was 
over, and the sea rippled gently to the breeze under the 
quiet sunlight, Theocles launched his ships and sailed 
away, not without leaving gifts to the hospitable Sice- 
lians. As soon as he reached Athens, he began to 
speak of the rich country he had seen, telling that the 
people were well disposed, and that it would be easy to 
get a broad strip of land, and hold it against all comers; 
but no one would listen to him, or if any noticed what 
he said, they answered that it would be unwise to dis- 
turb Polyphemus, or to run the risk of angering 
Hephestos, and that moreover they did not believe 


The Greeks a5 


anything that he said; which was a favourite refutation 
of argument among the Athenians. Then Theocles went 
over to Chalcis in Eubcea, and told his story; and there 
he found hearers and men very restless with the spirit 
of the sea, who had sailed far, and wished to sail far- 
ther, and who preferred trading and wandering to staying 
at home, and liked fighting better than either. But they 
were not godless men, and before going upon the expe- 
dition they consulted the oracle of Apollo, and the god 
promised them his protection and a prosperous voyage 
and all good fortune. Then some other Ionians and cer- 
tain Dorians joined themselves to the Chalcidians with 
more ships, and in the spring a whole fleet of vessels 
sailed westward, laden with all sorts of necessary things, 
and Theocles piloted them safely to the very point 
where he had found shelter the first time; but instead 
of waiting by the shore, he led his people up the hill 
by the easy declivities that are almost like artificial 
terraces, one above another, and took possession of the 
strong crest on which the theatre now stands. No 
doubt Theocles dealt in a friendly way with the Sice- 
lians, especially at first; but they were a humble and 
peaceable folk who looked with admiration upon the 
Greeks and with mild covetousness on their posses- 
sions, and were quite willing to part with a little land in 
exchange for a few shining toys of glass and tinsel. 
Besides, it does not appear that the Greeks, who were 
after all but a few, had come with any idea of seizing a 


36 The. Rulers; ot thessouct 


wide territory and enslaving the inhabitants to work for 
them. They had come, rather, to establish an outpost 
trading station whence they could export the produce of 
the rich island in the way of regular commerce, and the 
Sicelians soon found that instead of being a thorn in 
their side, the young city of Naxos, which Theocles 
founded to the southward of the hill, was a_ profitable 
market for their corn and wine and oil. 

Seeing how easy it was to settle and take possession 
of a site for a city, some of the Dorians who were with 
Theocles took courage to face the dangers of the fire 
mountain and the anger of Polyphemus, and they sailed 
farther southward, along the coast, till they came to the 
beautiful natural harbour which is now Augusta, but 
which they called Taurus, at the foot of the Hybleean 
hills, and there they founded Megara Hybleea, in 
remembrance of Megara in the Dorian country, between 
Attica and the isthmus of Corinth. There, from the 
end of a low promontory, a tongue of land runs due 
south and almost encloses a sheet of still water, where 
ships may lie in all weathers; and there the fore- 
shore is deep and fertile, being that lower extremity 
of the great plain of Catania which sweeps round the 
base of Mount Thymbris and terminates in the jutting 
land at Trogilos, just north of Syracuse. 

Swiftly the news went back to Greece that the colony 
was successful and that its wealth was already increas- 


ing, and within two years the great western movement 


The Greeks aa 


of the Greeks had begun, and the fate of the Sicelians 
on the coasts of Sicily was decided forever. Archias, 
the rich Heraclid of Corinth, whose evil passion had 
brought about the riot in which beautiful Actzeon was 
killed, was a fugitive and an exile before gods and men, 
and he collected together his wealth, his people and his 
servants, and sailed forth to found lordly Syracuse; and 
within a few years the Chalcidians and Ionians got pos- 
session of Catania and Leontini— the broad meadow 
lands where the Lzstrygones had been supposed to 
dwell; and Achzans had come to the mainland and 
had founded Sybaris in the soft Italian gulf, and Cro- 
tona, which is now Cotrone, soon taking possession of 
all that is now Calabria and building Metapontum, 
Poseidonia, and Terina. The Messenians of the Pelo- 
ponnesus also built Rhegium on the Italian side of the 
straits, and somehow their name afterwards crept across 
the narrow water, and Zancle came to be called Messana 
and then Messina. The Ionians also got round to the 
north side of Sicily and founded Himera, and after that 
came Dorians from the island of Rhodes and built Gela, 
which is Terranova on the Gela, the ‘gelid’ river of the 
Sicelians; and nearly a hundred years later the same 
people got possession of Akragas, which became Agri- 
gentum, and which is Girgenti to-day. The Megarian 
Dorians also founded Selinus, near Western Lilybzeum, 
and there one may yet see the most unimaginable mass 
of ruins that exists in Europe, for the earthquake that 


38 The Rulers of the South 


destroyed it left not one stone upon another, and buried 
none. 

In a hundred and fifty years the Greeks had got 
possession of the south, including all the mainland 
from Cumz near Naples, to the straits, and all the 
coast of Sicily from Himera on the north, not far 
from Palermo, round by the east and south sides to 
westward as far as Selinus. In Sicily the Phoenician 
traders had been gradually pushed to the west till 
their settlements only extended along about a hun- 
dred and fifty miles of the coast, though at that part 
of the island which was most convenient to them, 
as being nearest to Carthage. After they had got 
what they could of the south without very much 
fighting, the Greeks pushed further to the north and 
west, attempted to form a colony in Corsica and 
failed, and finally founded Massilia, now Marseilles. 

Though the extent of territory which they occupied 
in a short time seems very great, it must be remem- 
bered that in reality they at first only held the coasts, 
and that both on the mainland and in Sicily they 
pushed the original people into the interior, where 
the Sicelians and Italians for a long time pursued 
their original rural occupations in peace and_ prob- 
ably with profit, selling their produce to the Greeks, 
who consumed it in part, and in part exported it. 
The position of the Greeks in’ ‘the south @atetiar 


period was in one respect more like that which was 


The Greeks 39 


held for a long time by the East India Company in 
India, than that of England’s trading stations. It 
differed from it chiefly in that the majority of the 
Greek colonies were not only independent of each 
other, but also of the mother country, and had formed 
themselves into oligarchies, which had succeeded the 
first small monarchies of the founders, and were fol- 
lowed again by the despotisms of men who rose to 
the highest places through their own talents and the 
play of circumstances, like Gelon, Dionysius, and 
Agathocles. Another great difference lies in the fact 
that whereas the East India Company was never 
really a colony, in the ethnological sense, any more 
than it was politically one, and whereas the English- 
men who founded it, and the thousands who acted 
as its agents, officers, and fighting men, always looked 
forward to coming home to England, the Greek colo- 
nists settled permanently in new countries, and their 
cities became active and independent sources of genu- 
ine Greek thought, literature, and art. 

Corinth alone seems to have kept some hold and 
influence upon the new settlements formed by her 
citizens, but in the end that connexion died away also, 
and at the time of the Athenian invasion all Sicily 
was entirely separated from the mother country. With 
regard to the relations between the Greeks and the 
natives, events followed their usual historical sequence. 


At first the newcomers spread round the coast, as 


40 The Rulers of the South 


they increased, seizing all places most desirable for 
trade, and driving out other traders as well as the 
indigenous population. But when the coast was fully 
occupied, they naturally began to take possession of 





ANCIENT AQUEDUCT AT SOLMONA IN THE ABRUZZI, THE BIRTHPLACE OF 
OVID 


the interior, enslaving the peaceable country people 
by degrees, till they were practically the masters 
through the length and breadth of Sicily and South- 
ern Italy. 


It would be a mistake to look upon the conquest of 


The Greeks AI 


the south as a direct consequence of conditions in 
Greece. It was but an extension of the Hellenic 
westward movement from Asia Minor, which had set- 
tled Greece itself, and which filled all the eastern 
Mediterranean and ultimately spread into Spain. The 
whole race, continually fed by emigration from its 
place of origin in Asia, was moving towards the set- 
ting sun, as the Semite Phoenicians had moved before 
it, and it was with the latter people that it engaged in 
its first great struggle for existence in the west, at the 
very time when the mother country was fighting for 
life against the invasion of the Persian host. For the 
westward migration was itself caused by the awaken- 
ing of the Asian races, that culminated in the con- 
quests of Nebuchadnezzar, Cambyses, Cyrus, and 
Darius, which was checked at Salamis, and was ulti- 
mately thrown back upon itself and annihilated by 
the Greek Alexander the Great. 

We are too apt to think of those early times as 
barbarous and uncultivated compared with those of 
Pericles. We forget the vast civilization of Egypt, 
whose empire, in the seventh century before our era, 
was hastening to its decline, but whose culture was 
the model of all cultures then existing, and was 
looked up to by the Phoenician and the Babylonian 
alike, as well as by the Greeks themselves, who siav- 
ishly imitated Egyptian art for centuries, and sur- 
rounded with profoundest mystery the few poor 


A2 The Rulers of the South 


secrets of nature they succeeded in stealing from the 
rich treasures of Egyptian learning. Many do not 
remember that Babylon was at that time the greatest 
city in the world, and was enclosed within walls that 
measured thirty-six miles in circuit, the chief strong- 
hold of a power that overshadowed all central and 
western Asia. One should recall the existence of 
enormous libraries of learning, of hundreds of thou- 
sands of books, written in Egypt on papyrus, in 
Assyria on clay tiles, which were afterwards hardened 
by baking and coloured with many tints, each of 
which was distinctive of some branch of learning and 
thus contributed to the easy classification of the 
whole. Nor should it be forgotten that in those days 
the magnificent monuments of the Egyptians were 
still in the glory of perfect preservation, in Memphis, 
in Heliopolis, and in Thebes, or that in Babylon the 
legendary gardens of Semiramis still hung between 
earth and heaven, supported on a thousand arches, 
high above the city, but themselves overshadowed by 
the vast temple of Bel. The Greeks were familiar 
with Egypt through their trade, and many of them 
had wandered beyond Palestine to the banks of the 
Euphrates, and had written down careful accounts of 
their journeys. The men who settled Sicily and the 
south of Italy were adventurers, wanderers, and fight- 
ing men, but they were very far from uncivilized ; 


more than half of their religion was the worship of 


The Greeks 43 


beauty, and if the science they had obtained from 
Egypt was scanty, their own brilliant intelligence 
enlightened them in applying it. It is no wonder 
that within a few years of their settling in the south 
they became a new nation of artists, poets, and 
thinkers, actively creative in their own right, as it 
were, and immeasurably superior in cultivation to all 
the races with which they came into contact; it is not 
surprising that Sybaris should have outdone the East 
in refinement of luxury, nor that strong Crotona should 
have bred more winners of the Olympic Games than 
all Greece and all the Greek islands together. The 
Greek athlete was not the gladiator of later days, 
the mere ‘swordsman,’ as the word signifies; he was 
the result of the thoughtful worship of human beauty, 
brought to its final expression by natural selection and 
artificial training; and the winner of the Games was 
not merely a runner, a wrestler, or a boxer, he was 
the best man of his day at all bodily exercises whatso- 
ever, and in the eyes of the people that brought him 
home in triumph he was a visible god, the living 
incarnation of the Greek spirit. . Every race that has 
beaten the world has at the outset shown a physical as 
well as a characteristic superiority over its opponents, 
but in almost every case that superiority has been 
either unconscious, or has asserted itself with loud 
boasting and overwhelming brutality. The Greek 


alone knew how to cultivate and perfect the gifts that 


A4 The Rulers of the South 


placed him above other men, reverencing his own 
endowments as something divine within him, and ana- 
lyzing the secret sources of his own strength, until he 
had almost found a formula for the production of 
great men. 

At this time appeared one of the most romantic 
figures in ancient history, the first that deserves especial 


Cee A RT REET IR ORR EGLO 
OE a in 2 Be 





AFTER SUNSET ON THE SHORE OF EASTERN CALABRIA 


mention in the story of the south, a man of almost 
superhuman genius, who, had he lived in more ordinary 
conditions than those which accompanied the first mar- 
vellous development of the Greek people, would have 
become in the west what his contemporaries, Zoroaster, 
Buddha, and Confucius, became in Persia, in India, and 


in China, This extraordinary person was Pythagoras, 


The Greeks A5 


the Samian philosopher, the son of Mnesarchus, who 
was a very rich merchant and shipowner, and strange 
to say, in his moments of leisure, a sculptor of consider- 
able talent. 

It is neither a misuse of the term nor an exaggera- 
tion of fact to call the great thinker’s career a romantic 
one; for in its original signification the romance was the 
tale of the ‘romare,’ of the pilgrim and wanderer; and 
from ‘romare,’ derived from, or very closely connected 
with Rome, as a chief place of pilgrimage, we have 
made our modern word ‘roamer.’ If ever a man 
earned that epithet it was the Samian seeker after 
knowledge, who, in a life that covered nearly a century, 
spent but the first eighteen years in his home, who 
lived twenty-two years in Egypt, twelve in Babylon, 
and thirty-nine in Italy, who was a pupil of Thales, 
the favoured guest of Pharaoh, the friend of Zoroaster, 
and the founder of the great Pythagorean brother- 
hoods that played so interesting a part in the political 
and civil history of Southern Italy. 

The son of the rich man was taught by Hermodamas, 
and the tenderest affection grew up between the pupil 
and his master. The first instruction in those times 
consisted in the reading and recitation of poetry and in 
the art of music. Under the rule of Polycrates, Samos 
was the very centre of Greek art and thought. There 
lived Ibycus, the love poet born in Italian Rhegium, of 


whose works beautiful fragments have come down to 


46 The Rulers of the South 


us; there Anacreon spent his richest years, but of him 
little remains, for the Odes are not now believed to be 
all his work, though they have so long borne his name ; 
there dwelt also Theodorus the younger, the Benvenuto 
Cellini of his day, famous for the statues he modelled 
and cast in bronze, and for his marvellous skill at 
engraving, who made the ring of Polycrates; and last, 
the great tyrant himself, cunning, cruel, fortunate, a 
lover of every beautiful art, the despot of the sea, the 
delight of poets, the friend of Pharaoh, fated to die on 
the cross at last, like a common malefactor. Such was 
the court in which the boy Pythagoras grew up to the 
age of eighteen years, beautiful beyond other youths 
and gifted of the gods above all his companions. It 
is a conspicuous fact and one that raises strange 
reflections concerning modern theories of education, 
that every supremely great man of antiquity, from myth 
to legend, from legend to fact, was first taught to recite 
poetry and make music, and was not instructed in 
mathematics till he had spent years in the study of 
both; for it was held that a man who could not write 
in verse, could not write his own language at all, and 
that a being for whom musical sounds had no corre- 
sponding meaning was a barbarian unfit to associate 
with his fellows. So Pythagoras, whose famous propo- 
sition is the point of departure to which all trigonometry 
is referred, spent his first youth in playing on the seven- 
stringed lyre and in declaiming the Homeric poems, 


The Greeks AT 


which Pisistratus, the wise ruler of Athens, had very 
lately collected and finally arranged. Without doubt 
he sat at the feet of Anacreon, and filled the poet’s 
drinking-cup, listening to the voice that matched the 
wordsand to the words no age has ever matched, and 
doubtless he was beloved by Ibycus and saw Theodorus 
model gods of clay that were to be cast in bronze and 
set up in temples to be worshipped by the people; 
whence he began to understand that there was a faith 
above belief in idols, and that far beyond the earthly 
scenery of myth and the play of the beautiful little god- 
figures there was the All-Being in which all is contained 
that lives and dies and lives again. So when he was 
about eighteen years of age his mind was opened, and he 
began to desire absolute knowledge and to seek after it. 

Now at this time Polycrates had not yet attained 
to the height of his power, and he was enriching him- 
self by extorting money from his wealthy subjects 
and even by confiscating their goods with slight 
excuse. Therefore many writers have asserted that 
Pythagoras fled from Samos to escape from the 
tyrant’s grasping hands, but this is a senseless story, 
since he was then but a boy and his father and mother 
remained in Samos and lived in riches for more than 
twenty years after his departure. It seems to me 
much more probable that Polycrates had made a 
law, as many modern despots have done, forbidding 
‘young men to leave their country until they had 


48 The Rulers of the South 


performed some stated service; and that Pythagoras 
was in such haste to increase his knowledge that he 
would not abide the ordained time. So he fled 
secretly by night with his teacher Hermodamas, who 
afterwards came back alone and appears to have 
suffered no penalty. It is very clear that Pythagoras 
feared pursuit and capture; for though Samos is close 
to the mainland, and not far from Miletus, where 
both Anaximander and Thales, or Theletas, as he is 
sometimes called, were famous philosophers, yet the 
young man preferred to sail all the way to Lesbos, 
far to northward, where at that time he was safe 
from the messengers of Polycrates. There he dwelt 
with an uncle, a brother of his father, and was taught 
by Pherecydes for some time; but when he had 
learned of him what he could, he journeyed south- 
ward by land to Miletus, and sat down beside the 
ancient Thales and began to be initiated into the 
secret wisdom of the priests. 

The mysteries of the ancients were the truth, or 
the nearest approach to it then possible, as contrasted 
with the vast fictions of mythology in which the 
peoples believed. Without an exception, all the mys- 
teries taught of a god who had died and had been 
buried on earth, and who had returned to life again 
in glory; most of them foretold a judgment of souls, 
and all looked forward to a future state, either as 
following directly upon death, or as the end of a 


The Greeks AQ 


series of migrations, in which the soul passed from 
one body to another, purifying itself by degrees, or 
sinking by steps of defilement to final perdition. All 
the mysteries were ultimately monotheistic in idea, 
though the one god of the secret faith was considered 
as containing two, three, or four principles in himself, 
according to the ethic and psychic schemes adopted 
by the initiated of different nations. 

The early philosophers were all priests and mystics, 
most of them were poets, in the sense that they wrote 
down their thoughts in verse, and all were seekers 
after knowledge. The highest development, both of 
mysticism and of scientific inquiry, was considered 
to have been reached in Egypt, though it has been 
thought that the Magians of Assyria were better 
mathematicians than the Egyptian priests, and that 
the Chaldzans were as good astronomers. 

The true faith of those times was a profound secret 
in the hands of small communities of amazingly gifted 
men. It could never be popular, for the comprehen- 
‘sion required to understand it was far beyond the 
gifts of the masses, and the consequence was that 
although initiation into the mysteries was not the 
exclusive privilege of the aristocratic class, it was 
nevertheless very closely associated with an _aristo- 
cratic principle in the minds of the many, a fact 
which afterwards led directly to the violent destruction 
-of the Pythagorean brotherhoods in Italy. 


VOL, I E 


50 The Rulers of the South 


The intellectual grasp of the young Samian soon 
took possession of his master’s knowledge, and when 
he had been initiated into the mysteries of Zeus in 
the temple on Mount Ida, Thales declared that if his 
pupil would learn more he must find a way to be 
received among the priests of Egypt. No foreign 
student. had ever accomplished such an apparently 
impossible thing; but Pythagoras, who admitted no 
impossibilities, forthwith determined to possess himself 
of all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and of all learning 
possessed by men. 

That was a period of peace and prosperity in the 
world. Under Croesus, Lydia had developed immeas- 
urable wealth, Phoenicia, now under the lordship of 
Babylon, was recovering from the ravages of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, and Persia had not yet started upon her 
long career of conquest. Egypt, after a revolution 
which had placed a man of plebeian extraction upon 
the throne of the Pharaohs, was enjoying the last years 
of her splendour under the wise rule of Amasis. In 
the west the Greeks were spreading mightily, and were 
quickly developing the strength which first repelled the 
Carthaginians and soon afterwards proved an impassa- 
ble barrier to the advance of Xerxes. The known 
world was rich and at peace, and in the shadow of a 
hundred ancient temples, from the islands of the Medi- 
terranean to Mount Ida, from Assyrian Babylon and 
Phoenician Sidon to Egyptian Thebes, the chosen com- 


The Greeks 51 


pany of the wise cherished what was wisdom in those 
days, and followed those patient investigations in math- 
ematics and astronomy to which modern science is so 
deeply indebted. 

It was in Sidon that Pythagoras first became a true 
mystic, and it was there that he first conceived the idea 
of uniting and simplifying the many forms of mysticism 
into one religion which should satisfy at the same time 
the highest aspirations of the soul and the widest spec- 
ulations of the intellect, and which should be at once a_ 
faultless rule of spiritual life and a perfect guide to 
man’s social existence. The thought was high and 
noble, for it was the thought which inspired Zoroaster, 
Buddha, and Confucius, and it foreran the teaching of 
Christ as the dawn the day. 

In order to prepare himself for his mission, Pythag- 
oras felt that he must withdraw himself from the world 
among the wisest men at that time living. After he 
had been initiated in Sidon, he wandered down through 
Phoenicia into Palestine; he gazed thoughtfully upon 
the ruins of Jerusalem that lay broken to pieces in the 
dust like a vessel of clay, and he came to Mount 
Carmel and looked towards Egypt, which was the goal 
of his desires. So he took ship for the Delta in a 
small Egyptian trading craft, and the merchant and the 
sailors saw that he was a Greek, well skilled in learn- 
ing, and they agreed that they would sell him for a 
slave in Memphis, where he would fetch a good price. 


52 The Rulers of the South 


But he understood what was in their minds and showed 
no fear, and fixed his eyes upon them until they were 
afraid under the strength of his look, and gave over 
their evil designs; so he came safely to Memphis, 
where Pharaoh dwelt at that time, and where there 
were many wise priests. But these would have none of 
him, for he was a foreigner, and they thought that he 
wished to learn their secrets only to sell them for much 
wealth to the priests of Ida or of Delphi. So he abode 
among the Greeks, for there were many of these in 
Memphis, and he occupied himself in learning the 
Egyptian language. 

Then he bethought himself of Polycrates, the tyrant 
of Samos, who was yet in close friendship with Amasis, 
and with whom his father Mnesarchus had much inter- 
est. After that time Pharaoh, seeing the marvellous 
good fortune of Polycrates, advised him to cast away 
what was dearest to him, lest the gods should be angry; 
and then the tyrant threw into the sea the ring which 
Theodorus had made for him, and which he prized 
above all his possessions; but it was found again in the 
belly of a fish and was brought back to him by the 
fisherman. So Amasis broke friendship with him, see- 
ing that he was so highly favoured of the gods, because 
it was not good, being powerful, to be too closely inti- 
mate with one who was devouring the wealth of others 
and who never failed in an undertaking. But these 


things had not then happened, and Pythagoras wrote 


The Greeks 53 


a letter to the tyrant, setting forth his desires, and 
speaking of his long studies, and showing that the 
Greeks might profit by the wisdom of the Egyptians if 
only Polycrates would persuade Amasis to command 
the admission of Pythagoras to the school of the 
Egyptian priesthood. Polycrates therefore wrote a 
very urgent letter to Pharaoh, which he sent to Pythag- 
oras himself; and Amasis received the young man gra- 
ciously, and sent him to the priests at Heliopolis, the 
city of the Sun. But these sent him back to the priests 
at Memphis, and these latter, not knowing what to do, 
sent him at last to the great high priest at Thebes, with 
the royal command. The high priest made it hard for 
him, and required a long period of purification, and a 
painful rite and ordeal, hoping perhaps to terrify the 
scholar. But Pythagoras was of those who are born 
without fear, and he despised pain, and was initiated. 

Two and twenty years he lived in the temple in 
Thebes, and he mastered by degrees all the sciences, 
and the writings, and the mystic teaching of the 
Egyptians, and the religion which was afterwards 
called his teaching was a complete exposition of all 
that the Egyptians both knew and believed, and had 
acquired laboriously in thousands of years. It was 
the wisdom of those to whom a hundred years were 
but a day, and to whom ten generations were but 
as the continuous life of one man, inasmuch as what- 


ever was learned by each was wholly known to the 


54 The Rulers of the South 


next, without break nor interval of forgetfulness; and 
the whole was written down in a hard language that 
changed not in ten centuries; and: was kept secre: 
from the people. It is small wonder that Pythagoras 
should have spent a quarter of his life in acquiring 
what the wisest nation in the world had accumulated 
in more than a hundred generations. There, in the 
temple of Thebes, he dwelt and studied in peace, 
while the face of the earth was changed, while Cyrus 
erew great and greater, till he seemed the greatest 
of men that had lived, and spread out the empire of 
Persia and gathered all into his hands, to the very 
borders of Egypt. Then he died, and Amasis died 
also, and Cambyses came victoriously to Egypt and 
dragged Pharaoh’s embalmed body from its tomb in 
Sais to insult it shamefully; and he carried many 
away captive to Babylon, and Pythagoras the Samian 
was among the prisoners. Then Cambyses died too, 
and the pseudo-Smerdis, the Magian, and Atossa, 
the sister of the first and the wife of both, married 
Darius, the: friend of Zoroaster, and became the 
mother of Xerxes who invaded Greece. 

At the time when Pythagoras was taken to Babylon, 
he was forty-four years of age, and since he afterward 
lived to be almost a hundred years old, he had not then 
reached the middle of life. When he found himself 
a prisoner, and probably in the social condition of a 


slave, within the four walls of the greatest capital in 


The Greeks 55 


existence, in the heart of Assyria and at least five hun- 
dred miles east of the Mediterranean, he can have had 
little hope of ever returning to the west again. Yet to 
his philosophic genius such a captivity may not have 
seemed irksome, and he was not cut off from inter- 
course with his own people, for a great number of 
Greeks were employed about the court of the Persian 
king, and though news travelled slowly, it was brought 
with much detail, if also with much exaggeration. 
He resigned himself to his fate, and set to work to 
study the religious reforms of Zoroaster, whom he 
undoubtedly knew, and the mathematical methods of 
the Assyrian and Chaldzan astronomers — of some of 
those very men, perhaps, whom Belshazzar had called 
in to interpret the writing on the wall. So he lived 
and studied in peace, being one of the wise men 
attached to the court of Darius. 

Then he regained his liberty by a most extraor- 
dinary train of circumstances. Before Cambyses 
died of his wound in Ecbatana, Oroetes, the governor 
of Sardis and satrap of Western Asia, who had long 
cherished a private quarrel with Polycrates of Samos, 
enticed him to land in Lydia as his guest, and then 
crucified him with circumstances of hideous cruelty. 
But Darius sent a single ambassador who came to the 
court of Sardis and read to Oroetes the king’s com- 
mands, and the last command was that the satrap’s 
own guards should smite off his head. And so they 


56 The Rulers of the South 


did, for Darius’ name was great, and they hated 
Oroetes. The ambassador took back with him as 
slaves many of the friends and servants of the dead 
man, among whom was a very cunning physician of 
Crotona, who became the friend of Pythagoras in 
Babylon. One day Darius sprained his foot, and 
when his own physicians could do nothing for him, 
some one brought the skilled captive, who cured the 
king at once. So the king asked him what reward 
he desired, and he begged that he might return to 
his home. Darius yielded so far as to permit him 
to visit Crotona, if he would promise to come back, 
and not trusting him, he sent with him a Persian 
guard, and several men of learning, bidding them to 
write a description of the coast as they sailed, and he 
gave them a fine ship and many supplies. But it 
came to pass that as they sailed to Crotona they 
were driven into Tarentum under stress of weather, 
and the Tarentines took them all prisoners with their 
goods, and when the physician had told his story they 
let him go free and he returned to Crotona. Now 
there was at Crotona a rich man exiled from Taren- 
tum. And learning what had happened, he sent 
thither, and ransomed the Persian captives and their 
ship, and sent them all back to Darius, asking two 
things; namely, that the King would use his power 
to make the Tarentines receive him again and also 
that he would set free the wise man Pythagoras 


The Greeks 57 


whom Cambyses had taken captive in Egypt; this 
he asked at the request of the physician. Then 


Darius, being glad to receive his Persians safely 






SRR NR pn mee emegtt rem am te 


teak ininianacena 


AQUEDUCT AT TARANTO, FORMERLY TARENTUM 


again, promised both things, and the second, at least, 
he performed, for Pythagoras was set at liberty; and he 
came to Samos in time to see his father and his mother 


alive, and also Hermodamas his first teacher, who 


58 ihe Rulers of (thes sours 


had helped him to escape in the days of Polycrates. 
But he stayed not long in his home, for’ he desired to 
work among men and to turn his learning to their 
good, and his thoughts went out westward to the 
great Greek colonies of Italy, so that at last he 
followed the instinct of his soul and took ship and 
came to Crotona and founded the Pythagorean brother- 
hood, which was mystic, philosophical, and aristocratic, 
after the model of the Egyptian priesthood from which 
Pythagoras had got his wisdom. 

Hallam says somewhere that mankind has generally 
required some ceremonial follies to keep alive the 
wholesome spirit of association. It is hard to say 
now how many of the curious rules of life adopted 
by the Pythagorean brotherhood should be traced 
to this motive, and many of these contain more wis- 
dom than appears in them at first sight. The breth- 
ren abstained from eating flesh, as most mystics have 
done, but they were as careful never to eat beans; 
they believed in the transmigration and immortality 
of souls, yet they prohibited the use of woollen grave- 
clothes; they had an elaborate system of degrees and 
initiations, they possessed most of the existing wis- 
dom of their time, and they nevertheless followed 
rules for making a fire which seem utterly childish. 
Yet an inquiry into the origin and reason of some 
of these practices, if the facts could be. sufficiently 
known, would throw a brilliant light upon the domes- 


The Greeks 59 


tic customs of the early Greeks, and might not 
impossibly explain some of the peculiar superstitions 
of the south, such as that, for instance, which forbids 
a man to lay his hat upon a bed, or the universal 
southern belief that if a woman drinks from a new 
earthen jar, before a man has drunk from it, the 
water kept in it will ever afterwards taste of mould. 
In considering some of the extraordinary beliefs cur- 
rent among the Italians and Sicilians, it has often 
occutred to me that they may have had their origin in 
the fables about the Pythagorean brothers, to whom 
strange powers were imputed, of whom extraordinary 
tales were told, and some of whose visible practices 
may have been ignorantly imitated by the people in 
very early times. 

The society founded by Pythagoras was as much a 
secret one as that of the modern Japanese Buddhists, 
and lovers of esoteric philosophy will find many points 
of close resemblance in the two religions, if the doc- 
trine of the Greek philosopher deserves the name of 
religion, which he would undoubtedly have applied 
to it, if an equivalent word had existed in the 
Greek language. It taught that the soul is immor- 
tal, that the aim of man should be a virtuous life. on 
earth and a state of peace hereafter, and that g’ood- 
ness, if not the fear of God, is the beginning of 
wisdom. Yet it limited by the strictest tests the 


number of those who were admitted to a full know- 


60 The Rulers of the South 


ledge of its secrets, and it visited every betrayal with 
merciless severity; it professed to be a religion for 
the few, it was necessarily hieratic if not aristocratic, 
and it was fatally disposed by its exclusiveness to 
identify itself with a political party. It drew into 
itself, or its founder gathered round him, the noblest 
youth of Grecian Italy, at a time when the power of 
the democracy was increasing at an enormous rate; 
and in the first real conflict which took place its 
adherents died devoted deaths at the hands of a 
bloodthirsty proletariat, as more than one aristocracy 
has perished since. They had advised, directed, and 
morally ruled the people, and their general, the heroic 
Milo, had returned from a victorious war with Syba- 
ris, once all-powerful, but then fast sinking to an 
inglorious decadence by degrees of esthetic idleness 
and unmeasured luxury. They brought home great 
spoils to Crotona, and in the division, one Kylon, a 
brutal fellow whom the Pythagoreans had refused to 
receive on account of his evil life, stirred up a riot 
against them. In the house of Milo they made their 
last stand, and there most of them were slain; but a 
few escaped, and Pythagoras came to his end in 
Metapontum, and the brotherhoods were done away 
with forever. Their existence had endured twenty 
years; had it lasted longer they would have been led 
from their natural political sphere, by the dangerous 


paths of political expediency, down to the moral dis- 


The Greeks 61 


grace of political necessity, which is wholly unreconcil- 
able with any true philosophy, and they would have 
left behind them the tradition of a once pure faith 
degraded to the basest uses and expedients of politics. 
But they died in a 


whole and _ clean 


belief, and from their 
ashes arose some- 
thing new, which was 
not the Pythagorean 
religion, but the Py- 
thagorean philosophy ; 
their leader left a name 
little less than saintly, 
he bequeathed the ac- 
cumulated wisdom of 
the world to his sur- 
viving followers, and 
he left his memory 


to the veneration of 





mankind. 

t COLUMNS CALLED THE ‘‘TAVOLE PALA- 
DINE,” AT METAPONTO, FORMERLY 
METAPONTUM 


I have dwelt at grea 
length upon his story 
because it combines 
in a wonderful degree the elements of fable, romance, 
and history, and is therefore a fitting link between 
myth and truth. I am aware that almost every inci- 


dent in the tale has been held up to ridicule by 


62 The Rulers of the South 


some one scholar, but there is not one in which 
many others have not firmly believed. When learned 
authorities disagree, it is the right of the student 
of romantic history to choose from the confusion 
of discords those possible combinations which seem 
most harmonious. It is not his province to dissect 
the nerve of truth from the dead body of tradition, 
but rather by touch and thought and sympathy to 
make the old times live again in imagination. There- 
fore the godlike figure of this Pythagoras belongs 
among the Rulers of the South, as with the legends 
of his miracles, and the reality of his wisdom, with 
his profound learning, his untiring activity, and his 
unswerving belief in the soul’s life to come, with 
his love of man and his love of beauty, his faith, his 
hope, and his almost Christian charity, he repre- 
sented in its best conditions the highest type of the 
Aryan or Indo-Germanic people. It matters little that 
scholars should quarrel over the theories of numbers 
ascribed to him, that the one should deny his cap- 
tivity in Babylon and the other his long residence in 
Egypt, that Bentley should tear the traditions of him 
to pieces, that Roeth should glorify him almost to 
sainthood, or that Ritter should make a laudable but 
ineffectual attempt to find a golden mean of sense 
between the extremes; the fact remains that he lived 
and laboured, that he dreamt of a world of brother- 


hoods in which all good was to be in common, and 


The Greeks 63 


from which all evil was to be excluded, that when he 
was gone he left a philosophy behind him without 
which, as a beginning, it would be hard to imagine 
an Aristotle, a Socrates, or a Plato, and that both to 


his fellow-men and to those that came after him his 





THE SITE OF SYBARIS 


name meant all that was best, whether possible or 
unattainable, in the struggle of inward civilization 
against outward darkness. 

The place where Sybaris stood among gardens of 
roses and groves of fruit trees is a desolate plain, 


64 The Rulers of the South 


where not one hewn stone is to be seen above the 
storm-ploughed soil, and rotting trunks of trees and 
rain-bleached branches strew the sterile drift. There 
the soft Sybarites made it unlawful to rear a crow- 
ing cock in the city, or for braziers, smiths, and car- 
penters to work at their trades, lest any harsh sound 
should grate upon their delicate hearing; there even 
the children were clad in purple robes, and their hair 
was curled and braided with gold; there the idle 
reared witty dwarfs to jest for them, and bred little 
Maltese dogs with silky hair; and the five thousand 
horsemen of their cavalry rode in procession, wear- 
ing saffron-coloured robes over their corslets, and the 
people lived in luxuries beyond imagination, and in 
pleasures without a name, till Milo and the stern men 
of Crotona came and destroyed them all, and turned 
the waters of the river upon their city and swept it 
utterly away. The winter floods roar down the river 
bed where Sybaris was, and the spring freshets pile 
up brushwood and sand upon the barren stones, while 
overhead the southern hawk makes wide circles above 
the universal desolation, and his mournful note falls 
fitfully upon the lonely air. But Crotona flourished 
long and greatly, and its possessions extended from 
sea to sea; it has left in history the names of count- 
less winners of the Olympic Games, and the reputa- 
tion of its men and women for matchless strength 


and beauty; and though not a stone of its buildings 


The Greeks 65 


remains in sight, yet there is a sort of logical satis- 


faction in knowing that the ancient ruins which were 





FORTRESS OF CHARLES THE FIFTH AT COTRONE, FORMERLY CROTONA 


standing in the last century were finally destroyed in 
order that the stones might be used to build the mole 


of a safe harbour. For Crotona never disappeared 


VOL. I F 


66 The Rulers of the South 


from existence as Sybaris did, and where the ancient 
stronghold of Milo was reared upon a bold mass of 
seagirt rock, another fortress, strong in the middle 
ages, rebuilt by Charles the Fifth and still unruined, 
reflects its dark outline in the sea. 

A deserted corner of Italy now, Crotona is a land of 
farmers ignorant of all but farming, and it is hard to 
feel that it was once the heart of Greek strength, and 
beauty, and civilization in the west, and that where a 
single column rises in lonely beauty almost from the 
water’s edge, at Capo Colonne, the great philosopher 
once lingered in the shade of Lacinian Hera’s temple; 
that the picture of Lacedaemonian Helen hung upon the 
wall within, painted by Zeuxis from the five most lovely 
maidens of the city, and that the Greeks of all southern 
Italy came up thither every year in splendid procession, 
bearing gifts and offerings to the goddess and her 
shrine. | 

It is generally said that the influence of Pythagoras 
and of the brotherhoods, which was dominant on the 
mainland and left distinct traces of itself there after 
the catastrophe in which the disciples and their master 
perished, had little influence upon Sicily. Some say 
indeed that a tyrant of Centoripa, one Simichus, became 
an adept and divided all his possessions between his 
sisters and his subjects, and others assert that the peo- 
ple of Akragas, and Tauromenium, and Himera threw 


off the yoke of their several tyrannies at last, not as 


The Greeks 67 


common revolutionaries, but as true believers in the 


Pythagorean doctrines of individual freedom and com- 





TEMPLE OF HERA, CAPO COLONNE, NEAR COTRONE 


mon possessions; but these stories are gravely doubted, 
and Holm has shown that more than one wise despot 


was also accounted a Pythagorean. Yet to one who 


68 The Rulers of the South 


knows the south well, there is a striking resemblance 
between the organization of the original brotherhood, 
with its rigid tests of worthiness, its countless secret 
signs and pass words and peculiar practices, and its 
bloody vengeance upon unfaithfulness, and the rules 
and ordinances of secret societies that have ruled the 
south in later days. Were there no traces of such free- 
masonry among the slaves who twice rose against the 
Romans in Sicily and who seem to have connected 
themselves in some imaginative way with an Eastern 
tradition? Or among the people who destroyed Charles 
of Anjou’s Frenchmen in the Sicilian Vespers? Or is 
the evil Camorra of Naples to-day wholly different 
from a_ brotherhood, so far as the laws that bind 
together its members are concerned, though the object 
be crime instead of good? Or, to go one step higher, 
is the modern Mafia of Sicily, which so strangely com- 
bines a mistaken idea of patriotism, or at least of inde- 
pendence, with the most nefarious notions of general 
lawlessness, so wholly different in its forms from the 
brotherhoods, as not to be perhaps a degenerate descend- 
ant of them? Answer the question as one will, the 
south has always been the natural home of wide-spread 
and secret unions of determined men for one end; and 
whereas in recent history political parties have made 
use of them and have risen to power by their help, no 
party, and no government has ever been able to fight 
them to an issue nor to stamp them out. 


The Greeks 69 


The Greeks were an imaginative and a boastful peo- 
ple, prone to think well of themselves, like most highly 
gifted races, and it requires much good will to believe 
all the stories their historians have left us of their super- 
human endurance and courage; but it is an undeniable 
proof of their extraordinary vitality and strength that 
they withstood victoriously the simultaneous attempts 
of two great powers to crush them out of existence at 
a very critical moment in their career. About the year 
480 B.c. Xerxes and Carthage, apparently acting in 
concert, advanced from the east and west with vast 
armaments and enormous preparations, in the clear 
intention of annihilating the whole Greek nation in a 
single campaign. Xerxes came with all Persia and the 
north of India at his back; Carthage sent Hamilcar and 
three hundred thousand men. 

At that time, except in Syracuse, despots ruled over 
the principal Greek cities of Sicily, Gela, Callipolis, 
Naxos, Leontini, and Zancle, the first of which had 
under Hippocrates acquired a sort of lordship over the 
rest; and he indeed attempted to conquer Syracuse 
also, but failed when on the point of success, and left 
the undertaking to his successor Gelon, the conqueror, 
and none could be compared with him excepting Theron 
of Akragas, who became his friend and gave him his 
daughter to wife; and Theron ruled through the midst 
of the land, from Akragas on the south to near Himera 
on the north, but the tyrant of Himera was his enemy 


70 The Rulers of the South 


and the friend of Anaxilas of Rhegium on the main- 
land. So there was war between the north and the 
south, and the south stood for a Greek Sicily and a 
Greek civilization, but the north was against both. But 
in Himera there was a division of parties, and the one 
asked help of Theron, who came and took the city and 
held it, while the tyrants of the north turned to the Phee- 
nicians and to Carthage for aid. At that time the Phee- 
nicians were powerful in Panormus and all the eastern 
parts of the island, so that the Carthaginians were sure 
of being well received with all their forces and supplies 
in cities belonging to their own people, whence they 
could fight their way by land to a general conquest. 
They saw that their opportunity was come at last, 
and they made great preparations during three years, 
and gathered together mercenaries from many lands, 
as was their custom in time of war, from Italy and 
Liguria and from Gaul and Spain and Corsica, and 
many from Africa, and weapons were made _ with- 
out number, and a vast provision was collected; then 
they set sail with two hundred galleys and three thou- 
sand transports, under Hamilcar, the son of Hanno, 
one of the two kings called Suffetes, a man of ancient 
Carthaginian lineage, though his mother was a Syra- 
cusan; and he was a devout person who neglected no 
service of the Phoenician gods, and continually sacri- 
ficed mer and children to Ashtaroth on the altars of 


his house. Moreover, he had good surety that some 


The Greeks 71 


of the most western Greek cities would help him, 
such as Selinus and others. 

He set sail, therefore, with a good heart and dream- 
ing of great spoil. But immediately a great storm 
arose, and the ships that bore the cavalry with their 
horses, and the war chariots also, were filled and sank 
with all on board; so that when he reached Panor- 
mus he had only the mercenary foot soldiers, a great 
host of fighting men of all nations, wearing strange 
dresses and armed with many sorts of weapons. In 


’ 


the wide bay of Panormus, the ‘‘ All-harbour,” where 
the Golden Shell stretches between the high moun- 
tain and the water’s edge, he landed his men, and 
repaired his ships; and thence he marched along the 
narrow foreshore against Himera, where Theron 
awaited him, not without fear, for great rumours 
went before the armament. 

The fleet sailed along close in shore, keeping the 
army in sight, and when they came to Himera and 
saw that the gates were shut against them, Hamilcar 
made two camps, the one for his land forces and the 
other for his ships, which he beached high and dry, 
surrounding them with a high stockade and a broad 
ditch. But the tents of the soldiers began from the 
enclosure and followed all the west side of the city 
and along the low heights to southward. When 
Theron saw how great a host was come against him, 


he was afraid, and he walled up the west gate of the 


ie hes hitlerssotpthesocurcn 


city and sent messengers quickly and secretly to 
Gelon, the soldier king of Syracuse. But Hamilcar 
besieged the city, and when the defenders made sal- 
lies he drove them back with slaughter, making many 
of them prisoners; and the strange arms and wild 
dresses of the Carthaginian mercenaries frightened 
Theron’s men even before they came to close quar- 
ters. Nevertheless Hamilcar did not press the siege 
overmuch, and while he was wasting his days in 
small engagements, thinking himself sure of taking 
the city without loss, Gelon was crossing over through 
the mountains by forced marches, day and night, with 
fifty thousand men-at-arms and five thousand _horse- 
men, not mercenaries speaking many tongues and 
trained to many different kinds of warfare as Hamil- 
cars men were, but all Greeks of the Sicilianucittes 
under Gelon’s rule, well trained, speaking one tongue, 
and ready to die for their homes, their children, and 
their gods. .They -all encamped together and _ in- 
trenched themselves in the plain to eastward of 
Himera, and Gelon began to harass the Carthagini- 
ans with his cavalry, for they had none, having lost 
both horses and men in the great storm. Then the 
face of things changed, and the Himerans took heart 
and opened the west gate again, tearing away the 
stones they had piled up, and Gelon took many prison- 
ers and bethought him of some plan of striking a de- 


cisive blow. Now the Carthaginians had received 


hes Greeks rie 


promises of help from Selinus, the unfaithful city of 
the west, and the Selinuntians had agreed to send a 
body of horse to Hamilcar on a certain day which 
was also the feast of the Phoenicians; and a captive 
told this news to Gelon. He therefore waited until 
the feast day, and very early in the morning, before 
the sun was risen, he sent a chosen band of his own 
cavalry to the gate of Hamilcar’s camp, bidding them 
say that they were the Greek horsemen from Selinus 
whom Hamilcar expected. He, being deceived, bade 
the gates be opened and the riders went in; but they 
rode past him and his men without drawing rein 
till they came to the ships that were beached upon the 
sand, and they set them on fire before the Carthagini- 
ans well understood what they were doing, and then 
drew their swords and began to slay. 

Then, when Gelon saw the column of smoke rising 
up from the enemy’s camp, he knew that his stratagem 
had succeeded, for he was ready and on the watch; and 
he marched down with all his fifty thousand men, and 
with all the Himeran soldiers also, and in that great 
day the Greeks slew of the Carthaginians outright one 
hundred and fifty thousand, and wounded many more; 
and the rest fled as they might, leaving all behind 
them. Hamilcar also perished, and some say that he 
died a strange death; for it is told that all day, while 
the battle ebbed and flowed in a tide of blood, he stood 
before the great altar in the midst of his camp, sacrific- 


74 The Rulers of the South 


ing human offerings to the gods, that by some miracle 
they might turn and save him from destruction; but 
when it was towards evening, and he saw that all was 
lost, he spread out his arms and prayed to the setting 
sun, and threw himself into the flames upon the altar, 
the last and noblest burnt-offering of his own sacrifice. 
The few who fled intrenched themselves upon a 
mountain west of Himera, whither Gelon pursued them, 
and they were soon obliged to abandon their position 
for lack of water. Hastening to the shore with the 
- Greeks in hot pursuit, they found the few vessels which 
had escaped the flames, launched them as best they 
could, and put to sea; yet the unappeased gods pur- 
sued them to the.end, for the vessels were overladen 
and were overwhelmed in the stormy waters of the 
Malta channel. Three thousand and two hundred ships 
had sailed from the harbour of Carthage with more 
than three hundred thousand men, to make the con- 
quest of Sicily; a single skiff returned with scarce a 
dozen survivors to tell the tale. . 
Then the Carthaginians feared lest Gelon, having 
felt his strength and their weakness, should cross the 
water with his victorious Greeks to blot out their city 
and name, and take the rich coasts of Africa for his 
spoil, and so complete the circle of Greek possession 
round the central basin of the Mediterranean Sea. 
For, as some say, it was on the very day of Hamilcar’s 
destruction that Xerxes was disgracefully beaten at 


The Greeks 75 


Salamis; and if that be not so, it was at least soon 
afterwards; and the allied attempt of Persia and of 
Carthage to crush out the Greek power had utterly 
failed. Therefore the Carthaginians sent ambassa- 
dors to Gelon, who was now the greatest ruler in Sicily, 
to sue for peace on such terms as he could be induced 
to grant. But it is said that Damarete, Gelon’s wife, 
advised him not to set the price of peace too high, lest 
at some future time he should need Carthaginian help 
for himself. He therefore exacted only three condi- 
tions; namely, that the Phoenicians should desist from 
offering human sacrifices in Sicily; that they should 
pay two thousand talents as indemnity for the cost of 
the war; and that they should build two temples to the 
memory of the peace; thé one in Carthage, and the 
other at their expense in Syracuse. When the Cartha- 
ginians heard of such easy terms, they were over- 
joyed, and because they attributed their good fortune 
to Damarete, they presented her with a golden garland 
of one hundred talents’ value, which may have been 
equal only to about seventy-five ounces of pure gold, 
if the Sicilian talent is meant, but if the Attic talent 
was the measure, the worth of the garland would have 
been near twenty-five thousand pounds sterling. 

The power of Gelon grew vastly after these things, 
which happened about thirty years after Rome had 
become a republic, and more than two hundred 
years before Rome’s first war with Carthage. He was 


76 The Rulers of the South 


the first great ruler, for he brought under his dominion 
not only all Sicily but also a part of the mainland, and 
there is every reason to believe that he made Crotona 
and Rhegium, with all their possessions, tributary to 
him. In the first years of his lordship, he called a 
great meeting of the Syracusan people, and of all those 
to whom he had given the right of citizenship, bidding 
them come fully armed; but he himself, now that he 
trusted them, came alone and without armour or 
weapons, and stood up in their midst, and gave a true 
account of his actions in the war and afterwards. Then 
the people cried out and cheered, calling him their 
saviour, their benefactor, and their king; and so he was, 
and he changed not till he died, for he was a brave 
and just man, and a glory to the Hellenic name. He 
died of a dropsy when he had ruled only seven years, 
and the Syracusans built him a tomb with nine towers; 
but long afterwards the Carthaginians destroyed the 
sepulchre, and at last Agathocles pulled down the 
towers in envy of Gelon’s greatness, so that nothing 
remains to mark the spot to-day. 

It is easy and generally unprofitable to construct 
imaginary history from the starting-point of an event 
which might have occurred, but did not. Yet one may 
ask not unreasonably what would have taken place if 
Gelon had followed up the victory of Himera by cross- 
ing over to Africa and destroying Carthage at once and 


forever. That he could have done so there is little 


The Greeks 77 


doubt. At that time Carthage had few fighting men 
of her own, but was accustomed to raise mercenaries 
for her wars, and her whole army, consisting of a third 
of a million men, had just been utterly destroyed. 
Gelon had fifty thousand trained Greeks, he controlled 
vast wealth, and he had the prestige of victory. If he 
had pushed the war, the issue could hardly have been 
doubtful; Carthage would have sunk to the level of a 
province of Sicily, and two hundred years later Rome 
would not have had to fight the Punic Wars. But 
Gelon was a victor, a patriot, a wise ruler; he had not 
the instinct of the conqueror, and Carthage was left 
to recover from her defeat and to grow strong again 
within a few years. Yet what Gelon did contributed 
more directly to the growth of the beautiful civilization 
which blossomed in the reign of Hiero the First, and 
bore fruit long afterwards, than a career of foreign 
conquest could have done. 

With the exception of Alexander, whose character 
was more Asiatic than Hellenic, no Greek appears to 
have conceived the idea of direct lordship over many 
states. The ruler of the dominant state controlled the 
rest, much as the German emperors controlled the 
Holy Roman Empire, leaving to each country its own 
ruler and its own laws, but without the tradition upon 
which the Holy Roman Empire rested, and from which 
it derived its authority. From the days of Gelon, Syra- 
cuse became the chief despotism in Sicily, and led the 


78 The Rulers of the South 


rest in civilization as well as in war; but the other 
tyrants continued to rule, each in his own place, both in 
the island and on the mainland, with very considerable 
authority ; and Gelon’s brother and successor Hiero, 
who usurped the power from Gelon’s young heir, 
whose guardian he was jointly with another, had to sus- 
tain no insignificant struggle with Theron of Akragas, 
who had been Gelon’s friend, and with Anaxilas of 
Rhegium, before he established his right to stand first 
among the despots of hisday. Then, indeed, he pushed 
his influence northward on the mainland, and van- 
quished the Etruscans who had attacked Greek Cume, 
planting colonies in the island of Ischia and elsewhere, 
some of which afterwards moved away, being terrified 
by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, while others 
remained. So all the south became a harmonious, well- 
governed confederation of Greek states, a little empire 
—a great one for those days — under the guidance of 
Hiero. 

But he having attained to greatness, and not being 
by any means satisfied with the honour and glory 
achieved by his brother Gelon, nor being by nature 
of such simple and soldierly tastes, began to make 
his reign memorable for something higher and more 
enduring than conquest. Already the greatest ruler, 
he began to fill his court with the greatest men of 
the world, and to make Syracuse worthy, in beauty 
and grandeur, to be his home and theirs. 


The Greeks 79 


The Olympic Games held together all Greeks, 
throughout the civilized world, by a common bond; 
to be a winner was not only to win fame, sometimes 
undying —much glory was also shed upon the con- 
testant’s native city. Nor were the games only for 
those trained athletes who ran long races on the 
measured course, who wrestled desperately in the 
dust, or fought even to the death for the boxer’s 
prize, or leapt with weights, or strove in mere feats 
of strength without skill; besides these there were 
the chariot races, to which all the tyrants of the 
Greek states sent both chariots and priceless horses, 
vying with each other in the splendid show; and in 
these races the prize belonged not to him who drove, 
but to the owner of the steeds. Countless coins of 
exquisite design bear witness to the value the princes 
set upon a successful race, for it is now believed that 
these coins were only minted for such as had been 
winners; and as has been pointed out by specialists, 
there are coins of Messina, Catania, Leontini, Syra- 
cuse, Akragas, and many other cities, some even with 
Phoenician inscriptions from Panormus, all of which 
have on the reverse the biga, triga, or quadriga, often 
with a figure of Victory flying in the air above the 
horses’ heads. That racing with chariots was an 
almost universal sport throughout the Greek states 
we know, and the fact explains the immense impor- 
tance attached to the great contests of Olympia, of 


80 The Rulers of the South 


Delphi, of the Isthmus of Corinth, and of Nemea. 
But their greatest value to the world lay in the fact 
that they gave opportunities of inspiration to the 
poets of the time, whose odes to the victors earned 
a greater immortality of their own, and enriched pos- 
terity with some of the most beautiful masterpieces 
of verse that have ever been produced. 

The Greeks of Sicily and of the Italian mainland 
rivalled the rest and often outdid them in the num- 
ber of winners they sent to Greece, and while Crotona 
surpassed all other cities in the foot races and in 
wrestling and boxing, Sicily was more often first with 
her chariots and horses. That was a sort of contest 
in which only the richest could compete, and more 
than once Hiero himself carried off the palm. Then 
in the train of Olympic victories came the Olym- 
pic poets, and Simonides of Ceos, and Bacchylides 
his nephew, and Pindar himself, all came to Sicily 
and spent years in Syracuse, being three lyric poets 
of strangely different genius, but reckoned almost 
equal in fame while they lived. We know something 
of the character of each. We can call up from the 
depth of five and twenty centuries the still living 
memory of Simonides, who enjoys the singular dis- 
tinction of having first discovered that poetry is a 
marketable production of genius, for it is recorded 
that he was the first poet who not only received re- 
muneration, but exacted payment for his verses, and 


The Greeks | 81 


he must therefore be looked upon as the direct liter- 
ary ancestor of the modern author. Worldly, gifted, 
tactful and extravagant, he used to say that his 
poetry filled two chests, the one with thanks and the 
other with gold, but that when in need, he had 
always found the first empty. Once, when Anaxilas 
of Rhegium won the mule race at Olympia, — for 
there were mule races too,—he offered Simonides a 
sum of money to write an ode to him as victor. The 
poet thought the price too small and answered that 
he would not demean his genius by writing of mules. 
The tyrant determined to have what he wanted, in- 
creased his offer to a sum which he knew that the 
poet would not refuse, but wondered how the latter 
would extricate himself from the dilemma he had 
created by his first refusal. Simonides was equal to 
the occasion. His address to the mules began, ‘ All 
hail, ye daughters of wind-swift mares’— and the 
poem contained no further allusion to the hybrids. 
At another time he observed that it must be better 
to be rich than to be wise, since he always saw wise 
men knocking at rich men’s doors. Filled with amaz- 
ing vitality and love of life, age seemed to take no 
hold upon him; at eighty he was the winner of a 
poetic contest and led the Cyclic Chorus in Athens, 
which means that he not only composed the song 
and sang it, but danced round the altar with the 
chorus of fifty youths who sang with him; and this 


VOL. I G 


82 The Rulers of the South 


was in Athens, the very home of satire, where to be 
ridiculous for an instant was to be ruined forever. 
He lived to the age of ninety, and we do not hear 
that his faculties lost their vigour nor his genius its 
charm. 

Bacchylides, his nephew, was of different temper, 
though he affected to imitate the worldly wisdom of his 
uncle. Nothing he wrote has come down to us, but at 
one time Hiero esteemed him above Pindarvandsatae 
blot upon his character is his mean jealousy of the latter 
and his low instinct of flattery. The evil that he did 
lived after him, but his good verses perished, like those 
of Simonides. 

Last of the three, and unhke “both, comes stue 
greatest —‘as the rain-fed river overflows its banks 
and rushes from the mountains, immeasurable, deep- 
mouthed Pindar rages and rushes on’—the proud, the 
stern, the inspired, who ‘lived not for the world but 
for himself,’ scorning gold as Simonides loved it and 
despising flattery and backbiting alike. There must 
have been something about the man that imposed itself 
upon others, something not far from awe and much 
above the most sincere admiration — something that is 
in the Odes, which alone have come down to us, with a 
few fragments quoted by Athenzeus, something lofty, 
half divine, almost of the prophet; and all men recog- 
nized it and honoured the poet. Yet he would never 
make his home with Hiero, though he wrote four odes 


The Greeks 83 


upon his victories, and in the end, being eighty years 
of age, he died in Argos, independent to the last, and 
leaving that rare and unrivalled fame which suggests 
neither comparison nor similarity with that of other 
men, the glory of those few who were not only first 
but last of their kind. 

To the court of Syracuse there came not only lyric 
poets; A*tschylus was a favourite with Hiero also, 
and Epicharmus, the father of comedy, whose rough 
humour shocks the instinctive reverence we feel even 
for false gods, when they were grand or beautiful, who 
in the ‘Marriage of Hebe’ represented mighty Jove 
squabbling for the best fish at the feast of the gods, 
and introduced the divine Muses as glibly chattering 
fishwives, offering their wares for sale; a man of most 
irrepressible wit and impertinent humour, even in his 
ninetieth year. 

/Eschylus was a younger and a stronger man. He 
may be called the father of tragedy as Epicharmus was 
of comedy. Rugged and vast of plan, his work is to 
that of Sophocles as a rock temple of India to a Gothic 
cathedral; dimly terrible with the unseen presence of 
fate, the horror of the final catastrophe overshadows 
the play from the first and speaks in every accent of 
predestined man and woman. The watchman sees evil 
coming from afar, the stamp of it is on Clytemnestra’s 
brow, Cassandra in frenzied prophecy foretells the mas- 
ter’s murder, and when it is accomplished, unseen, in 


84 The Rulers of the South 


the imagination of the horrified spectator, its effect is a 
hundred times more terrible than if the king’s blood 
were shed upon the stage. The weapons of Atschylus 
are huge, and unwieldy to a common hand; but in his 
strong grasp they have a masterly precision and an 
appalling directness. Before his time there were play- 
wrights and actors, there were wandering companies 
of Sicilian mimes who played from town to town, 
changing the action and the lines of their half-impro- 
vised dramas to suit the circumstances in which they 
found themselves; and there were genuine theatres 
also in the great cities, where graver plays were per- 
formed. But Aéschylus first made the stage what it 
has remained more or less ever since, by introducing 
machinery and accessories never heard of before, a god 
appearing through a trap-door — the original ‘ Deus ex 
machina, — to put an end toa situation which had no 
natural conclusion; and rich costumes were also his 
invention, and sounds produced behind the scenes sug- 
gestive of deeds too atrocious to be seen by the audi- 
ence. 

Many tales are told to explain why the tragic poet left 
Greece.’ One writer says that he was dissatisfied with 
the honour he received in his own country; another, 
that during a great performance of one of his trage- 
dies a platform upon which a number of the audience 
were seated broke down with its load, and that the 


poet feared the ridicule of the people; again, it is 


The Greeks 85 


Saids that he left his home in anger, because in a 
contest of tragedy the young Sophocles obtained the 
prize against him, but the strangest reason of all is 
that the Athenians drove him out because their 
women were driven to frantic fear by the terrible 
chorus of the Furies, in his tragedy called the Eu- 
menides. Whatever the cause may have been, and 
it seems useless to seek for a complicated one, he 
came twice to Sicily, and on the second visit, being 
Hearly seventy years or age, he settled: in the’ city 
of Gela, near which, as tradition says, he died a very 
extraordinary death. For it is said that an eagle, 
having taken a tortoise and meaning to drop it from a 
great height upon a rock, in order to break it and 
devour its flesh, looked down and saw the bald head 
of Aéschylus, who was walking in a meadow near the 
city; and taking it for a polished stone, the eagle 
dropped the tortoise directly upon it, whereby A¢schy- 
lus came to his end. The people of Gela buried him 
with great pomp, and raised a splendid monument to 
his memory. 

Besides his other inventions in connexion with the 
stage, A%schylus was the inventor of the tragic 
trilogy, which in its true and original form consisted 
of three complete tragedies, of which the subjects 
were closely dependent each upon the other and in 
each of which the unity of time, of place, and of 


action were maintained in the strictest manner. It 


86 The Rulers of the South 


had not entered the thoughts of Greek playwrights to 
give any play a greater scope of time than was re- 
quired for its actual performance, by dividing it into 
acts, separated by an imaginary lapse of hours, days, 
or months; to produce such an illusion it seemed 
necessary to them to write as many different plays 
as the whole action required different times, and to 
present them on successive days in order that the 
spectators might the more easily imagine a longer 
interval of time to have passed. The modern play 
in. three, four, or five, acts is in substance a trilogy, 
a tetralogy, or a pentalogy on a small scale, and the 
Greeks would certainly not have admitted a Wagne- 
rian trilogy to be a legitimate piece of play-writing. 
During his splendid reign Hiero not only attracted 
to his court such men as these and many others be- 
sides, but he exerted also the great powers which 
had fallen to his lot in improving and beautifying his 
capital, and it was largely due to his initiative that 
Syracuse soon afterwards became one of the most 
beautiful cities of the world. It was to be the privi- 
lege of others, notably of Dionysius the Elder and of 
Hiero the Second, to bring the work to full perfection, 
but the first and greatest merit is due to the first 
Hiero. To the end he was successful in all he under- 
took, and victorious in every war. When Theron, the 
friend of Gelon, died at last after reigning sixteen years, 
his son Thrasydzus succeeded him in the tyranny. 


The Greeks 87 


Ambitious as he was cruel, and in all other respects 
different from his father, he conceived the idea of 
conquering Syracuse, and raised an army of twenty 
thousand men, almost all of whom were Greeks. 
But Hiero was before him, though he had to march 
his troops over a hundred miles through a difficult 
country, and Thrasydzeus, instead of invading his 
enemy’s dominions, was forced to give battle within 
his own on the banks of the river Akragas. Hiero’s 
army slew four thousand and put the rest to flight, 
including the young tyrant himself, who escaped to 
Megara in the hope of being received in a friendly 
manner; but the inhabitants feared him, for his name 
was associated with every sort of barbarity, and when 
they had taken counsel they put him to death. After 
that Hiero was supreme while he lived. 

He died after reigning eleven years, probably in 
the city of A‘tna, of which it is doubtful whether any 
trace remains. He had founded it himself, notwith- 
standing certain authorities which insist that it was 
only built after his death, and in the latter years of 
his life he probably preferred it as a residence during 
the cold weather, for it was situated on the southern 
slope of the volcano, partly protected from the east 
winds which, in the winter season, are the only draw- 
back of the climate of Syracuse. 

The first great development of art, as well as of 
literature, in Sicily dates from the victory of Himera 


88 The Rulers of the South 


which terminated the first Carthaginian invasion. It 
was between 480 B.c. and 409 B.c. that the great 
temples of Selinus, of Segesta, and of Akragas were 
built, edifices which surpassed in size and_ solidity 
almost every building of the sort in the Greek world. 
The architecture was most magnificent; the art of 
sculpture, however, was still in its archaic infancy, 
and the large fragments of uncouthly sculptured 
metopes preserved in the museum at Palermo must 
have contrasted strangely, when whole and in their 
places, with the splendid proportions and_ finished 
workmanship of the temples they adorned. ‘These 
stand, or le in fragments, throughout the island from 
end to end, witnesses of an age of faith, of strength, 
and of warfare; of a primitive warfare that was but 
wholesale hand to hand strife, of physical strength 
deified and worshipped as the main requisite for vic- 
tory, of a material faith which was little better than 
a glorified generalization of man’s animal instincts 
and of nature’s common phenomena. We modern 
men are more easily surprised by such monuments 
of material power than by the far more wonderful 
results which purely spiritual and ethic influences 
have brought about in more recent days. It seems 
more extraordinary to us that human hands should 
ever have piled one upon another the enormous 
masses of stone that composed the temples of Selinus, 
than that whole nations should have fought to the 





\ 











| P a y } nA 
op ; i my rh vw 


The Greeks 89 


death for half a dozen more or less vague articles 
of religious belief. . 
There is nothing in Europe like the ruins of Selinus. 
Side by side, not one stone upon another, as they fell 
at the earthquake shock, the remains of four temples 
lie in the dust, within the city, and the still more gigan- 
tic fragments of three others lie without the ruined 
walls. At first sight the confusion looks so terrific 
that the whole seems as if it might have fallen from 
the sky to the world, from the homes of the gods to 
destruction on earth—as if Zeus might have hurled 
a city at mankind, to fall on Sicily in a wild wreck 
of senseless stone. Blocks that are Cyclopean lie 
like jackstraws one upon another, sections of columns 
twenty-eight feet round are tossed together upon the 
ground like leaves from a basket, and fragments of 
cornice fifteen feet long lie across them or stand half 
upright, or lean against the enormous steps. No 
words can explain to the mind the involuntary shock 
which the senses feel at the first sight of it all. One 
touches the stones in wonder, comparing one’s small 
human stature with their mass, and the intellect strains 
hopelessly to recall their original position; one climbs 
in and out among them, sometimes mounting, some- 
times descending, as one might pick one’s way through 
an enormous quarry, scarcely understanding that the 
blocks one touches have all been hewn into shape by 
human hands. and that the hills from which men 


90 The Rulers of the South 


brought them are but an outline in the distance. But 
as one reaches the highest fragment within the Acrop- 
olis, the plan of the whole begins to stand out from 
the confusion; the columns have all fallen in ranks, 
and in the same direction, and from the height one 
may count the round drums of stone which once com- 
posed each erect pillar. There is method in the ruin 
and a sort of natural order in the destruction. No 
earthly hands, bent on blotting out the glory of Selinus, 
could have done such work, neither the crowbar and 
lever of the Carthaginian, nor the giant-powder of the 
modern engineer. Nature herself did the deed. In 
the morning the seven temples of Selinus were stand- 
ing whole and perfect against the pale and dazzling 
sky; at noonday the air grew sultry and full of a 
yellow glare, the sea lay still as liquid lead, and the 
sleeping beast in the field woke suddenly in terror of 
something far below, that could be felt rather than 
heard; an hour and more went by, and then the long, 
low sound that is like no other came up from the 
depths of the world, and the broad land heaved like 
the tidal swell of the ocean, once, twice, and thrice, 
and was still, and a great cloud of white dust hung 
where the seven temples had stood. As they fell, so 
they lie and will lie for all time, a very image of the 
abomination of desolation. 

The sculptured fragments have been almost all re- 
moved to the great museum in Palermo; they seem to 


The Greeks QI 


have represented battles between goddesses and giants, 
and, while the treatment is of archaic simplicity, there 
are, here and 
there, a few fig- 
ures in which 
the rising genius 
of sculpture fore- 
shadows the great 
things it was soon 
foecoas On. the 
whole they al- 
most reach the 






artistic level of the 
fragments from A¢gina, 
and we may fairly take it for : 
granted that this was the state mene tig 
of art throughout Sicily towards ats 6 


the end of the seventy years FRAGMENT OF THE 
RUINS OF SELINUS, 


NOW SELINUNTO 


6 


which elapsed between the two 
Carthaginian invasions. Of the 
same period is the great temple of Athene at Syra- 
cuse, crowning the island of Ortygia. Enclosed within 
high walls, it has been converted to the uses of a 
cathedral, but the columns of the temple stand intact 
within, and it is easy to fancy it as it was. High on its 
seaward side Athene’s burnished shield was hung up 
of old to catch the rays of the noonday sun, a beacon 
to ships at sea; for mariners who were departing on 


92 The Rulers of the South 


a voyage used to go up thither before they weighed 
anchor, and when they had made offerings to the god- 
dess they received from the priests little earthen ves- 
sels containing flowers and grains of incense ; and when 
the burnished shield was lost to their view as they sailed 
away, they consigned the little jar and its contents to 
the sea with a final prayer for their safe return. 

In widest contrast to the ruins of Selinus and to the 
church-temple at Ortygia, is the still almost perfect tem- 
ple of Segesta. At the western extremity of the island 
a lonely valley leads from the deep Gulf of Castella- 
mare upwards to the mountains. Climbing the narrow 
path, the traveller looks in vain for ancient ruin or 
modern habitation until he pauses for breath upon the 
shoulder of a hill, and suddenly he sees over against 
him the faultless outline of one of the most beautiful 
temples in the world. Dark and symmetrical, it stands 
alone upon the waste, vividly perfect against the sky 
that is bright with the reflection from the sea beyond. 
Of all its forty Doric columns, only one is very slightly 
injured. Nothing more strangely impressive can be 
imagined, nothing more solid and more silently grand, 
more nobly alone. It is as if the visible spirit of the 
Greeks had chosen that wild solitude for its last abiding- 
place. 

Yet of all the cities of Sicily, Segesta was. the least 
Greek, if, indeed, it can be said to have been Greek at 


all.”- There 1s-a sort of romantic uncertainty about its 


< 
fe 
i 
1) 
iy 
vy 
< 
i 
i 
P= 
fx} 
- 











< YR LA of 
ih) ‘ i “ye 
- ‘ LT 
by 
’ 
« 
: 
. 
; 
4. 
ahhy ‘ 
ey 
14 
. 
‘ 
’ 
« 
’ 
~ 





yaa 
Aid ; f 


uf be 
ne fe ; ; | 
Uae vat) ah AR Be as fe any ee a i 


The Greeks 93 


origin which was particularly attractive to the Romans, 
and they admitted the claim of the Segestans to a 
Trojan descent as noble as that of A‘neas himself. It 
is certain that from very early times Segesta was in 
closer and more friendly relations with the Phoenicians 
than any other colony, and it was this circumstance 
which twice almost caused Segesta to be the ruin of all 
Greek Sicily: the first time when, finding itself iso- 
lated from the other Greek cities and hated by them 
owing to its former attachment to Phoenician interests, 
it sent out ambassadors to Athens and provoked the ill- 
fated Athenian expedition in which Alcibiades played 
-so strange a part; the second, when it appealed to 
Carthage for help against Selinus and brought on 
directly another Carthaginian invasion. 

But before describing those great events which took 
place when Sicily’s power and influence were at their 
height, it is necessary to glance at the record of Hiero’s 
successors, since Syracuse had, under him, become the 
commanding power of the island, and the chief centre 
of its civilization. Though Hiero was one of the great 
rulers, and, on the whole, a wise one, it must not be 
forgotten that he had in reality usurped the sovereignty 
which Gelon had intended to transmit to his own son, 
and had held it in spite of the other members of his 
own family, by the means usually adopted by usurpers. 
He employed numerous spies, both men and women, to 


detect his enemies, and he exiled or destroyed the latter 


94 The Rulers of the South 


without the slightest hesitation. At his death, he left 
one brother living, the eldest of all and the least gifted, 
Thrasybulus by name. He also believed that he was 
destined to the kingship, and he attempted to withhold 
it from his nephew as his brother had done; but he had 
neither the strength of character nor the talent which 
the latter had possessed, and he oppressed the people 
beyond endurance. The Syracusans had borne the 
exactions of Hiero, the victorious, the generous, the 
adorner of the city, the terror of their foes; they soon 
lost patience with his mean and miserly successor. 

Sicily was ripe for a revolution, and the democratic 
spirit was abroad; the fall of the tyrant of Akragas 
had prepared the way, and the despots of the minor 
cities governed in hourly fear of ruin. Syracuse was 
mistress of the island, and indirectly of Southern Italy ; 
it was certain that if she freed herself from her master, 
the rest of the country would follow. 

But Thrasybulus was strong in mercenary troops and 
ships, and the numerous relations and adherents of his 
family stood by him to a man; a memorable struggle 
began, of which the result was long doubtful and which 
showed for the first time the extraordinary strength 
which the older parts of the city possessed, both by 
natural position and artificial fortification. 

Syracuse overlooks an extensive natural harbour, 
two miles long and a mile across, free from rocks or 
shoals, and so completely enclosed by the mainland and 


The Greeks 95 


the island of Ortygia that the entrance is but little over 
a thousand yards wide, opening due east. The island 
is divided from the mainland by what is nothing more 
than a narrow canal; it extends from the entrance 
northward, and north of it Gelon had walled off from 
the mainland a strip of land about two and a half miles 
long, of which the sea-line consists of low cliffs that 
offer no landing worth the name, and no shelter from 
any wind all the way round by east, from north to 
south. This strip of land received the name Achra- 
dina, a word for which there seems to be no satisfac- 
tory derivation, unless it comes from ‘achrades,’ the 
wild pear trees, which still abound in this part of Sicily. 
A modern Sicilian writer suggests that the word might 
be made to mean the ‘height of the cape.’ The city 
of Gelon consisted of Achradina and Ortygia, both 
strongly fortified. At the time of the revolution 
against Thrasybulus, the suburb Tyche, ‘good For- 
tune,’ was without the walls, on the west, and the 
larger suburb Neapolis, ‘the new city,’ extended to 
the Lysimeleian swamp that opens upon the bay. In 
later years the whole of the great harbour was sur- 
rounded by buildings. 

Thrasybulus shut himself up within the walls with 
about fifteen thousand men who bore arms. The popu- 
lation of the city consisted largely of those persons to 
whom Gelon had given rights of citizenship, whom he 
had collected about him, and who had remained there 


96 The Rulers of the South 


under Hiero. In the general revolution these made 
common cause with the genuine Syracusans of old 
stock, and, with the latter, occupied the suburbs, mak- 
ing fruitless attempts to drive the tyrant from his posi- 
tion.. They soon saw that success was impossible, for 
by means of his ships he kept his communications 
open by sea and was able to provision the city at his 
pleasure. The people then turned to the other Sicilian 
cities for assistance, renouncing their supremacy over 
the island by doing so. Those to whom they appealed 
asked nothing better than to help in destroying the 
power under which they had fretted so long. Gela 
Akragas, Selinus, and Himera joined the Syracusans, 
sending both men and ships. Thrasybulus attacked the 
ships first, but lost a part of his own, and the remain- 
der were soon blockaded in the harbour; his attempts 
to sally out by land were equally unsuccessful, the 
enemy closed in upon him on every side, he was in dan- 
ger of famine, and he sued for his life, asking only that 
he might be allowed to leave the country unmolested. 
The men who had him in their power had been 
oppressed by him, robbed by him, and it is more than 
probable that some of them had been tortured by him; 
but they magnanimously granted his request, he was 
allowed to depart unmolested, and he ended his days 
peacefully in Locri. His fall was the signal for a gen- 
eral rising against the tyrants, and in a few months all 


the south was in the hands of a jubilant democracy. 


The Greeks 97 


The Syracusans set up a gigantic statue to Zeus and 
instituted the Festival and Games of Freedom, during 
which four hundred and fifty oxen were to be sacrificed 
every year to make a feast for the people, and for this 
purpose they built an altar a tenth of a sea mile long 
and over sixty feet wide —a Gargantuan expression of 
gratitude to the gods in the present and the future, 
which suggests that under Thrasybulus they had never 
enjoyed a feast, and had rarely had enough. But the 
revolution was not yet over, for the new democracy 
took measures to exclude from the higher public offices 
all those burghers who owed their citizenship to Gelon, 
Hiero, or Thrasybulus, and a long struggle ensued, 
during which the offended party held Achradina and 
Ortygia as the last tyrant had done. With the help of 
the Sicelians, the old burghers triumphed at last, how- 
ever, got possession of the walled city, and drove out 
their adversaries. 

One of the first results of the fall of the tyrants 
throughout Sicily was that the Sicelians reasserted 
themselves on the ground of having helped the burghers 
to obtain their freedom, and regained a large part of 
the lands which had been taken from them by the 
different Greek cities. When Hiero determined to 
transplant the population of Catania, to change its name 
to Aftna, and to fill it with more or less Doric citizens, 
he settled those whom he had expelled upon broad 
tracts of country taken from the Sicelians. These 


VOL. I H 


98 The Rulers of the South 


possessions now fell back to their original owners. 
The former inhabitants of Catania besieged it and drove 
out those who had supplanted them, and the latter 
established themselves in the new city on the southern 





GIRL WASHING NEAR REGGIO, CALABRIA, FORMERLY RHEGIUM 


slope of the mountain, which Hiero had called A*tna, 
while Catania resumed its original name. The same 
thing took place elsewhere, in all places, in fact, where 


Hiero had endeavoured to change the population in 


The Greeks 99 


order to create one entirely devoted to his interests. 
As may well be imagined, the result of this second 
change was a considerable degree of confusion, to 
remedy which the various Sicilian commonwealths 
held a general meeting, at which they agreed that the 
rights of citizenship should nowhere belong to any but 
the original inhabitants of the towns and that all other 
persons, whether natives of other cities in the island, 
or Greek immigrants, or barbarians, should lose their 
acquired or usurped rights and depart forthwith. It 
does not appear, however, that they were driven into 
any cruel exile, and in the great majority of cases they 
received sufficient grants of land in other districts. 
When matters were thus settled in a preliminary 
manner, a period of peace and extraordinary prosperity 
began, which lasted nearly sixty years and which offers 
little of interest to the general reader, but which resulted 
in a vast development of art, literature, and general 
culture. Of course, men appeared from time to time 
whose personal influence rendered them dangerous to 
democracy. For their own safety the Syracusans intro- 
duced the law of petalism, corresponding almost exactly 
to the ostracism of the Athenians. Instead of the 
fragments of pottery used by the latter to vote the expul- 
sion of a citizen, the Syracusans used the ‘ petals,’ that 
is the leaves, of the olive tree, and the citizen for whom 
the greatest number of these were cast into the urns 


was obliged to exile himself from the city for five years, 


100 The Rulers of the South 


whereas the time of exile imposed by the Athenian 
ostracism was ten. As usual, however, the common 
people promptly made use of this method to get rid of 
every one with more than average intelligence, and the 
custom was abolished. 

An extraordinary and not altogether unromantic 
attempt on the part of the Sicelians to regain the prin- 
cipal power in the island produced the only wars 
fought in this period. Ducetius, who suddenly appears 
as the Sicelian king, succeeded in raising a considerable 
force with which he dislodged the inhabitants of the 
newly founded city of A*tna and seized several other 
important points; but the Syracusans, though not 
friendly with the sufferers, looked upon their defeat as 
a slight upon Greeks in general, and gathering their 
allies, soon drove Ducetius to desperate straits. Seeing 
himself lost, he conceived the strange idea of throwing 
himself upon the mercy of his enemies. Under cover 
of a dark night he rode alone across the intervening 
country, entered the city at dawn and took sanctuary 
upon the altar in the market-place; the people assem- 
bled in multitudes from all parts of the city, and in 
the presence of a vast throng the vanquished king 
declared that he gave up his leadership and all his 
possessions to the Syracusans. Immediately a great 
discussion arose. Some were for making an end of 
him at once, but more generous counsels prevailed, and 


as in the great revolution the tyrant Thrasybulus had 


The Greeks IOI 


been allowed to go his way in peace and security, so 
also now the Syracusans voted that Ducetius should 
go free, on condition, however, that he would exile 
himself to Corinth and promise faithfully to remain 
there during the rest of his life. Heswore the required 
oath and departed, but he found means to elude the 
obligation ; for it was in the interest of Greece to weaken 
the Greek power in Sicily if possible, and an opportune 
oracle, doubtless inspired by Corinthian gold, bade 
Ducetius return to Sicily and found a peaceful colony 
upon the shore known as ‘the beautiful.’ With the 
full consent of the Corinthians, the Sicelian king, who 
was in their eyes no better than a barbarian, sailed 
away with many ships and a great body of armed 
Greeks, and actually became the founder and father of 
a flourishing Hellenic colony on the north coast, where he 
was practically beyond the reach of his former enemies. 
The strange result of this move was that the people of 
Akragas regarded it as a stratagem of the Syracusans, 
gathered an army, attacked the latter, and were badly 
beaten, while neither party molested Ducetius in his 
new city. He lived about eight years more and died 
aenetural death. After the defeat of the: forces of 
Akragas, Syracuse became once more the leading 
power in the island, not without exciting jealousy 
among the other cities and stirring up the envy of the 
Athenians by her extraordinary prosperity and mag- 


nificence. 


102 The Rulers of the South 


The chief fault of the Greeks was a direct result 
of that gift of individuality, which has never belonged 
in the same degree to any other nation. They loved 
freedom as few people have loved it, but at no time 
in their history were they ever reconciled in any sort 
of unity or harmony. The wonderful talents displayed 
by men born in every part of the Greek world pro- 
duced both a variety and an opposition of initiatives 
which were easily fostered into violent dissension by 
the competitive spirit that was so strong in the Hel- 
lenic race. All opponents, not Greeks, seemed un- 
worthy to men who had vanquished the Carthaginians 
in the west, and made a laughing stock of Persia’s 
gigantic attack from the east. If after the battles 
of Himera and Salamis the whole Greek nation, from 
Asia Minor to Western Sicily, and from Italian Naples 
to the shores of Africa, had united to effect the con- 
quest of the known world, Europe, Asia, and Africa 
would have been theirs, and the Hellenes would have 
filled the part afterwards played by Rome. But their 
instinct threw them into competition with each other, 
rivalry led to strife, and strife to destruction ; their patri- 
otism was local pride, their loyalty was incapable of 
any broad interpretation, and they squandered in petty 
wars with each other the strength, the courage, and 
the military genius that should have made them the 
masters of mankind. If the famous line of Nathaniel 
Lee, ‘When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug 


The Greeks 103 


of war,’ has passed into a proverb, the reason is that 
the saying is profoundly true. To them it seemed 
hardly worth while to fight except against each other. 
The long period of peaceful prosperity, during which 
the free democracies of Sicily rose to supremacy in 
culture as well as in wealth, was brought to an end 
by the jealousy of the Athenians, who seized the 
opportunity of a quarrel between Syracuse and Leon- 
tini to interfere in favour of the latter, which rep- 
resented the party disaffected under the Syracusan 
leadership of the island; and this interference had 
its origin in the long struggle between the Dorian 
and Ionian Greeks which we call the Peloponnesian 
War, and which was practically fought to a finish 
in the harbour of Syracuse. It was the outbreak in 
Greece of the old enmity between the two great 
branches of the Hellenic race which revived the same 
almost forgotten hatred between the Sicilian cities. 
At that time, taking free men and slaves together, 
the population of Sicily seems to have been about 
three millions and a half, all of whom, both the origi- 
nal Sicelians and Elymians, and the Phoenician colo- 
nists and traders, were so far Hellenized that they 
used the Greek language and practised Greek rt, 
even in cities such as Panormus, which were not at 
all under Greek political domination. Sicily was al- 
ready the granary of the Mediterranean, and just 
then was a commercial rather than a military power, 


104 The Rulers of the South 


possessing but few ships and a limited number of 
trained soldiers. On the whole, Syracuse and the 
principal Sicilian cities were more closely allied with 
the Peloponnesian confederation than with the Athe- 
nian state, and it was natural that a city like Leontini, 
hard pressed by the Syracusans, should turn to Athens 
for help, and that Athens should promptly grant the 
request, by sending a small expedition of twenty ships. 
The force was absurdly inadequate, the generalship 
of the leaders was lamentably insufficient, the result 
was a miserable defeat before Inessa, and the’ Athe- 
nians barely made good an ignominious retreat. A 
year later, when they had succeeded in seizing Messina, 
which was distracted by factions, the Syracusans made 
interest with the stronger party and in alliance with the 
men of Italian Locri drove the Athenians out again with- 
out difficulty, but lost the day in a sea-fight soon after- 
wards; and so the small warfare went on from year to 
year with very little result except to stir up old enmities 
between the Sicilian cities, some of which feared Syra- 
cuse, while some feared the possible domination of 
Athens; but their own general interests soon got the 
upper hand, and holding a peace conference in Gela, they 
were easily persuaded by the Syracusan Hermocrates 
that it was necessary to face Athens as a common foe. 
Therefore the Athenians retired altogether and left the 
island to itself for a time. 

The great expedition under Alcibiades was made 


The Greeks 105 


against Syracuse, and against Sicily generally, at the 
instigation and on the representations of Segesta. The 
latter city was at war with its neighbouring enemy 
Selinus, and being worsted, began, as most of the states 
did in those days, to appeal to its powerful friends for 
help, and first of all to Carthage. The Selinuntians, on 
their side, asked assistance from Syracuse, which was 
granted in a small measure. But Carthage would do 
nothing for Segesta, and the latter, allying itself with 
Leontini, always oppressed by Syracuse, sent an em- 
bassy to Athens, ever ready to interfere, making great 
promises of payment for the alliance. The Athenians 
took the precaution of sending representatives by sea 
to Segesta to find out whether there was any probabil- 
ity of obtaining the promised payment in case the 
required assistance were given. It was on this occa- 
sion that the Athenians became the victims of one of 
the most extraordinary and amusing frauds in history. 
Their ambassadors were received with unsurpassed 
splendour, and the Segestans, who were in reality very 
poor, succeeded in producing upon their guests the 
impression that they possessed vast wealth. Leading 
them up to the ancient temple of Aphrodite on Mount 
Eryx, above Drepanon, which is Trapani, they showed 
them what they called their war treasure, an immense 
collection of sacred vessels of fine workmanship and 
seemingly of precious metals, but of which a great 


number were in reality worthless imitations, apparently 


106 The Rulers of the South 


made for the occasion. ‘The ambassadors were dazzled 
by the display and were doubtless told that the treas- 
ures were too sacred to be touched or examined. It 
appears certain that such objects as were really of any 
value had been borrowed from Sicelian cities that hoped 





THE *‘GRAN SASSO D’ ITALIA,” FROM AQUILA 


to profit by the coming of the Athenians. The ambas- 
sadors were then entertained for some time in Segesta 
with the most profuse hospitality, and the sailors from 
their ships were feasted by the inhabitants. For these 


occasions every available dish and vessel of gold or 


The Greeks 107 


silver was collected together, and as much plate as 
possible was borrowed from the Sicelians, all of which 
was sent secretly from house to house to make a fresh 
appearance at every feast. Ona less magnificent scale 
the same was done for the entertainment of the soldiers 
and sailors, who drank the rich wines of Western Sicily 
from vessels of wrought silver for the first time in their 
lives, and formed a correspondingly high opinion of 
their hosts. The whole fraud was perfectly successful, 
and the ambassadors sailed away to tell the citizens of 
Athens that Segesta was one of the richest cities in the 
world and well able to pay for any assistance in war. 
To confirm the impression they had thus created the 
Segestans soon afterwards sent ambassadors to Athens 
bearing sixty talents of silver in bullion, borrowed from 
their friends, and asking for sixty ships; the silver was 
offered as payment in advance for the first month’s ser- 
vice. What would have happened to Segesta if the 
Athenians had ever been in a position to enforce their 
demand for more, when they discovered how they had 
been imposed upon, may be left to the imagination of 
the reader; as it turned out, matters took another 
direction. ) 

At that time Alcibiades was the representative in 
Athens of all that meant change, movement, and popu- 
lar excitement. He had long dreamt of a conquest of 
Sicily, in which he saw magnificent opportunities for 


satisfying his boundless vanity; he was at that time 


108 The Rulers of the South 


thirty-five years of age, the handsomest, the bravest, the 
wittiest, and the most worthless of mankind. He advo- 
cated the Sicilian expedition with irresistible eloquence 
and claimed the right to command it, in a speech of 
which the brazen impudence is historical. 

“Tt belongs to me,” he said, “above all others# tose 
in command, and to tell the truth I consider myself 
worthy thereof. The very things for which I am so 
noisily attacked are not only an honour to my family 
and to myself, but also a benefit to my country. If the 
Greeks admit that Athens is greater than she ever was, 
this is in a measure due to the display I made as your 
representative at the Olympic Games, where I entered 
seven chariots, which no private citizen had ever done 
before, and won the first prize, and had the second and 
fourth places, and did everything in a manner suitable 
to such a victory. And if I give choruses and dances 
at home, my fellow-citizens of course envy me, but the 
strangers who come here see the outward appearance 
of greatness. The unfortunate do not share their mis- 
fortunes with others; why should a man who glories in 
his own prosperity set himself down to the level of 
common mankind ?”’ 

It seems strange that a man should carry his point 
by talking in such a strain, but of all men living Alci- 
biades knew his fellow-citizens best, and Nicias, the 
leader of the conservative party, made no attempt to 
oppose him on his own ground, but contented himself 


The Greeks 109 


with making a fair statement of the possible advantages 
and evident risks which would attend the expedition, 
giving at the same time an opinion as to the manner in 
which it should be conducted. He concluded by mod- 
estly offering to withdraw his claim to any command if 
any one understood the matter better than he. The 
result was that he and Alcibiades were appointed joint 
leaders with Lamachus, and preparations were at once 
made on a very great scale. Meetings succeeded meet- 
ings, speeches were made without end, and Athens 
went mad over the anticipated conquest and possession 
of one of the richest spots in the world. Nothing 
else was talked of for many weeks; strolling lecturers 
held forth upon the subject to delighted crowds at the 
corners of the streets, and drew imaginary maps of 
Sicily in the dust. It was clearly demonstrated and 
proved in the mind of every patriotic Athenian that 
as soon as Sicily was taken, Athens would take 
Italy, Carthage, and the western islands of the Medi- 
terranean, and lord it over all the coasts of the sea to 
the very Pillars of Hercules. 

In the final discussion from which I have quoted 
fragments of Alcibiades’s speech, the latter, in order 
to persuade the people, spoke disparagingly of the 
Sicilian power and declared the conquest of the island 
an easy matter. Nicias, who disapproved of the ex- 
pedition at heart and understood its real difficulty, 
did not hesitate to say that the force must consist of 


I1O The Rulers of the South 


at least a hundred triremes, sixty being full war-ships 
and the rest transports, and five thousand heavy- 
armed troops, with all the light-armed men and fol- 
lowers which such an armament implied. He _ per- 
haps thought it probable that the Athenians would be . 
discouraged from the enterprise by his demands; but if 
so, he had miscalculated their temper. They granted 
without hesitation all that he asked, and would have 
given him more also. For, as Thucydides tells us, 
the city had recovered from the effects of the plague 
and from the long war, and a new generation of 
young men had grown up, and there was abundance 
of money in the public treasury. 

But Alcibiades had many enemies, who hated and 
envied him. They hit upon an unexpected way of 
injuring him, and he might have been ruined and 
even executed before the departure of the expedition, 
if only they had all agreed. There were in Athens 
a great many images, called Hermz, which were 
heads of different gods set on pillars of stone 
squared and tapering to the foot. In earlier times 
the head had always been that of Hermes, whence the 
name. These were set up in doorways both of prt 
vate houses and of temples, in honour of the tutelary 
divinities, and were regarded with a certain degree of 
reverence. Some enemies of Alcibiades took advan- 
tage of a dark night to mutilate almost all these 
images throughout Athens, hacking the features of 


The Greeks III 


them to pieces, and in the midst of the excitement 
that followed they accused Alcibiades and his friends 
of having perpetrated the outrage in a drunken frolic, 
as a direct and wilful insult to the gods. Athens 
was in an uproar, the gods had been offended on the 
Pver OL, tne oTcatest: expedition ever sent out, the 
mutilation of their images was an omen of shipwreck 
and defeat, and the Athenians trembled for their repu- 
tation, their lives, and their money. Great rewards 
were offered to any one who would give information 
against the impious evil-doers. In a moment Alci- 
biades was accused of a hundred crimes of sacrilege, 
the greatest of which was that of holding mock cele- 
brations of the mysteries, and as for the Herma, it 
was clear that he had broken them, because the great 
statue of Hermes near his own house was almost the 
only one that was untouched. Informers also swore 
that they had seen him and his friends doing the 
deed and had recognized them by the bright light of 
the moon, forgetting in broad daylight that the moon 
was new on that very night. Alcibiades demanded 
immediate trial, but his enemies feared the army, for 
he was beloved by the soldiers, and insisted that he 
should set sail with his command, yet hold himself 
ready to stand his trial when called upon to do so. 
He was obliged to submit to this iniquitous decision, 
and it being now midsummer, the great fleet set sail 


with solemn pomp and ceremony. 


II2 The Rulers of the South 


Before they got under way the sixty men-of-war 
and the forty transports were drawn up in line at 
the Pirzus, with all their flags and their standards 
in the morning sun; and a trumpet call rang out 
upon ‘the air, high and clear, calling” the hostaas 
warriors and seamen to offer the last libation and the 
final prayer. So the gold and silver goblets were 
filled with purple wine, and the dark red libations 
stained the dark blue sea, while the orisons of those 
who were departing and of all those who were gath- 
ered on the shore went up to the gods together. 
This being done, they weighed anchor at once, the 
oars began to swing in time, and the great array 
went forth upon the calm waters; and the ships 
raced with each other from the Pirzeus to A‘gina and 
then steered for Corcyra, where the allies were to 
muster with transports and provisions. Then, with 
all the allies, there were a hundred and thirty-four 
triremes besides two fifty-oared Rhodian galleys, with 
more than seven thousand fighting men, a noble army 
and fleet if one considers the size of the Athenian 
state, but an inadequate force for the conquest of a 
civilized country having three and a half million of 
inhabitants. Holm, however, whose authority is gen- 
erally indisputable, reckons that with the crews of 
the fighting ships and the necessary number of 
squires for the heavy-armed soldiers, the whole com- 
pany must have numbered about thirty-six thousand 


The Greeks ot 


souls; and before the war was over Athens had sent 
more than sixty thousand men and two hundred war- 
ships to Sicily. Not a ‘single vessel ever returned, 
and few indeed were the wretched stragglers who 
found their way back to Greece at last. 

One of the decisive struggles of the world was at 


hand, and there was to be no compromise from first 





EUCALYPTUS TREES NEAR THE SITE OF SYBARIS 


to last; it was to be fought to the end, and the end 
was to be destruction. The greatest sea-power in 
existence was determined to get possession of the 
richest island in the sea, and the greatest Greek 
power, the power of the south, was united in self- 
defence. The news of the coming fight went out and 
rang along the shores of the Mediterranean and was 
carried inland by traders and merchants, and the 


VOL, I I 


114 The Rulers of the South 


whole civilized ancient world watched the contest with 
anxiety. 

The Athenian command was divided between three 
men of entirely different natures, —the slow and obsti- 
nate Nicias, the boastful and ill-advised Alcibiades, 
and Lamachus, who was the best soldier of the three 
but the least influential by his political position. As 
matters developed, each proposed a different plan, 
according to his character. 

The Athenian fleet, having met the allies at Corcyra, 
crossed the narrow part of the Adriatic to the Iapygian 
headland, and bringing to before one city after another 
endeavoured to induce the inhabitants to join in a gen- 
eral movement against Syracuse. But these efforts 
were vain, and the cities declared that they would 
afford no help, but would ultimately act in accordance 
with the decision of the other Greek cities of Italy. 
Reaching Rhegium, the Athenians were for the first 
time treated with some friendliness; for though the 
city would not admit them within its walls, it gave 
them permission to encamp on the shore without, 
and to establish a market whither the country people 
might bring them provisions for sale; and there the 
whole Athenian force established itself for a time. 
In the first place three ships were detached from the 
fleet and sent to Segesta in order to obtain some part 
of the great sum of money the latter city had prom- 
ised. To the dismay and disappointment of the 


The Greeks 115 


Athenians, the messengers soon returned bringing word 
that the Segestans could only raise the absurdly small 
sum of thirty talents. A discussion then arose between 
the three generals as to the conduct of the war. 
Nicias, who had been opposed to it from the begin- 
ning, advocated a naval demonstration against Selinus, 
during which efforts should be made to extract money 
from Segesta, failing which the city should at least 
be forced to provide a large quantity of provisions. 
These being obtained, he advised that the whole expe- 
dition should return to Athens. 

Lamachus, who was the practical soldier, said that 
Syracuse was wholly unprepared for resistance, and 
that it would be an easy matter to fall upon it unex- 
pectedly, gain a brilliant victory, and return home with 
vast spoil and sufficient honour. 

Alcibiades, who was always the evil genius of his 
country when he did not appear as her deliverer, was 
bent upon permanent and extensive conquest. With 
his usual eloquence and with more than accustomed 
insistence, he addressed the council of war, and pro- 
posed that before attacking Syracuse, the Sicilian 
cities should be systematically canvassed in order to 
secure an overwhelming body of allies for the great 
undertaking. He proceeded to exhibit the advantages 
of this course in the most brilliant and attractive light; 
his momentary great popularity with the troops gave 
him an unfair advantage over his colleagues, and the 


116 The Rulers of the South 


discussion ended in their reluctantly approving his 
design. 

Had the situation been anything like what he sup- 
posed it to be, the plan might have succeeded; but 
he was in reality altogether ignorant of the state of 
Sicilian feeling. Many Sicilian cities were indeed 
envious of Syracuse, and the great body of the original 
Sicelians resented its supremacy; but none desired to 
fall under the rapacious rule of Athens, and the vast 
majority would have considered such subjection as 
calamitous to their country as a Carthaginian conquest. 

The plan of campaign having been decided, a num- 
ber of ships sailed southward along the Sicilian coast 
to Naxos and Catania, the only cities which were 
known to be unchangeably hostile to Syracuse; and 
Naxos indeed promised the Athenians such assistance 
as she could give, but in Catania there was a party 
that favoured the cause of the Syracusans and was 
strong enough to keep the Athenians out. Thereupon 
a squadron of ten ships was detached to make a sort 
of declaration of war in the very harbour of Syracuse, 
at a time when the appearance of the whole of the 
Athenian force there might have terminated the war 
in a week. Instead of this, however, the whole expe- 
dition returned to Catania and succeeded in seizing 
that city by a stratagem which caused the Syracusan 
party to depart secretly and in haste. But nothing 
of any importance was accomplished, and the hour of 


The Greeks 117 


victory was squandered in puerile negotiations with 
Camarina and other small places. 

At this juncture the Athenian senate, having agreed 
upon a plan for sentencing Alcibiades to death, sent 
a ship for him with orders to bring him back to stand 
his trial. Being fully aware of the danger to which 
he was exposed, he embarked upon his own vessel, 
under convoy of the Athenian man-of-war, but clev- 
erly slipped away from the latter under cover of the 
night and escaped to Sparta, after which he was in 
due course sentenced to death, in contumacy; and 
therewith he disappears from the history of the south, 
leaving behind him the evil he had done to the Athe- 
nian cause. 

Nicias and Lamachus being now left together in 
command, the counsels of the former prevailed, and 
the whole fleet began to sail round Sicily by the 
north, striking a blow here and there, taking a few 
prisoners who were afterwards sold as slaves to raise 
money, and receiving at last the thirty talents which 
Segesta was able to give. They sailed on by the 
west and south, but a large body of the soldiers appear 
to have crossed the island by land to Catania. So 
more time was wasted which was of immense advan- 
tage to the Syracusans for making preparations. 

Two years had passed since the first arrival of the 
Segestan ambassadors in Athens when the Atheni- 
ans at last laid formal siege to Syracuse, nearly one- 


118 The Rulers of the South 


half of which time had been shamefully wasted on the 
one hand by the assailants and had been used with 
great profit by the assailed on the other. Some refer- 
ence has already been made in these pages to the 





OLD WELL AT COTRONE 


position of the city and the nature of the land adjoin- 
ing it, but a more complete description is now neces- 
sary in order to understand the nature of the great 
struggle which took place there. 


Let the name of Syracuse mean for us not only the 


ihe .Greeks 119 


city as it is, and the five cities that once composed it, 
or the two, with their suburbs, of which it consisted 
at the time of the Athenian invasion, but the whole, 
with the neighbouring land and including both the 
great and the small harbours; let it take in what the 
traveller can see below him and around him when he 
stands on the rampart of Epipole, facing northwards 
first and then turning by his right till he faces south 
—one of the most wonderful sites in the whole world, 
consisting of two small peninsulas of gentle outline 
and of even height, extending outwards and towards 
each other like the claws of a crab and enclosing the 
great harbour between them, with the island of Ortygia 
across the entrance. The island was the beginning of 
the city, which was first founded there and afterwards 
bridged the narrow channel and grew out to Achradina, 
thence westwards to Tyche and Neapolis, then down 
through the Lysimeleian swamp and across the Anapus, 
the swift and silent stream where grows in rich profu- 
sion the papyrus, extinct in Egypt now and everywhere 
but here—and up to the Olympieum, due west of the 
harbour — spreading at last all round Plemmyrium to 
the sea again, to face its starting-point across the 
water; and in its great days the whole was fourteen 
miles round about. But by great catastrophes and 
again by small degrees, in the alternating haste or 
slow delay of ruin, it has all shrunk back to the island, 


saving only a few newer buildings just on the mainland 


120 The Rulers of the South 


below Achradina; and now it may have come to life 
once more, to overgrow its long-buried destruction with 
all the profitable dulness of a modern commercial city. 
For the history of the south is not ended, and he who 
gazes at the most magnificent natural harbour in the 
Mediterranean, and then turns his eyes to the most 
fertile lands of Italy behind him, and upwards to the 
mountains stored with rich minerals, and who is able 
to forget his prejudice and see that though the Sicili- 
ans are a hot-blooded tribe, prone to use the knife and 
not averse to bloodshed, they are nevertheless a manly 
and a hard-handed race, fearing neither danger nor toil 
—he who judges these things at their value, under- 
stands that the future holds some good thing for such 
a country and for such men. Moreover, guessing at 
what Syracuse was in the past, he can understand also 
why the Athenians so much coveted it for themselves 
that they fought for it on the spot for 
a whole year, to their utter ruin and 
destruction. 

Of all Sicilian cities, Syracuse was 
the richest in pure water, and even 





now, though the old aqueducts are in 
SYRACUSAN COIN WITH 2 
THE MEAD OF Aner pare destroyed) sthercausmclUcnms omnes 
THUSA dance in this respect as few cities 
would not envy. Arethusa first, the matchless and 
mysterious spring, rises almost from the sea under 


Ortygia, within the harbour. It is certain that the 


The Greeks 121 


water passes in some way under the sea, but whence 
it comes will perhaps be never known. The Greeks 
said that it was Alpheius, the river of Arcadia, 
which plunges into a mountain chasm and disappears 
from sight. The lonely nymph of the Acroceraunian 
mountains, chased by the strong river god, sent up a 
piteous prayer to Artemis and sank beneath the stream; 
and the goddess brought her back to the sun by the 
Syracusan bay, and Shelley’s magic voice has sung her 
song. Science conjectures that the mysterious water 
rises in the neighbouring hills, in a spur of Thymbris, 
and, flowing under Achradina, passes below the small 
harbour and beneath Ortygia to its rising place. We 
do not surely know, for it is a mystery still, and a won- 
der. At this spring Nelson watered his fleet when he 
anchored in the harbour on his way to fight the battle 
of the Nile. It is well cared for now, and the Syracu- 
sans have planted the lovely papyrus in the central pool. 
Then besides Arethusa there were three great aque- 
ducts, and a fourth, the greatest of all, which draws its 
water from the higher part of the river Anapus, eigh- 
teen miles away. Southward, too, in the Plemmyrian 
peninsula, I myself have explored a part of a great 
subterranean channel which I do not find mentioned in 
books, cemented for the flow of abundant water and 
having openings at intervals for the air; but in some 
later age this was used as a catacomb, and rough cells 
were hewn here and there in the walls. It is quite cer- 


122 The Rulers of the South 


tain that the united waters that supplied the old city in 
Greek days would fill a river. 

It would have been strange if the Syracusans had 
felt much apprehension, after their enemies had wasted 
so much time in futile excursions along the coast and in 
objectless waiting in their camp at Catania. Bands of 
Syracusan riders traversed the country in all directions, 
and cantering up to the Athenian lines, inquired sar- 
castically whether their inactive foes had come to re- 
store the rights of the Leontini or to settle as colonists. 
At last Nicias decided to act. He began by sending a 
treacherous message to inform the Syracusans that if 
they would attack the camp at Catania before sunrise 
on a certain day, a large number of the Athenians 
would then be within the city, that the party which 
favoured Syracuse would shut and hold the gates, and 
that it would thus be an easy matter to destroy the 
Athenians who were left in the camp. The Syracusans 
believed the message and appeared at the appointed 
time, only to find the camp deserted and the Athenians 
gone, for they had sailed away on the preceding even- 
ing and were entering the harbour of Syracuse at the 
very time when the Syracusan cavalry reached the 
-empty camp. 

At the last m'™ 1e city was therefore unprepared 
for the arrival o we armament. The Greeks had 
already carefully ubserved the harbour when their ten 
ships had entered it to make the declaration of war, and 


The Greeks Loe 


they now took advantage of the knowledge gained on that 
occasion to establish themselves in a position which was 
all but impregnable. Without approaching the inner 
side of Ortygia, they sailed directly across the harbour, 
landed to the southward of the mouth of the Anapus, 
and immediately occupied the heights of the Olym- 
pieum. They then proceeded to beach their vessels 
upon the sand, and according to the custom of those 
times erected a strong palisade to protect the ship-yard 
from a land attack. Finally they destroyed the bridge 
over the Anapus by which the so-called Helorine road 
crossed from the swamp to the Olympieum. They thus 
commanded the principal height in the bay, were at 
liberty to launch or beach their ships as they pleased, 
and were protected from the city by the narrow but 
very deep and rapid stream. They could accept or 
refuse battle as they pleased. 

The Syracusans were bitterly disappointed to find 
that the enemy had left Catania, and fearing the worst 
they rode furiously back to the city. The Athenians 
were already encamped and intrenched and the bridge 
was destroyed. Crossing the stream at a higher point, 
probably on the road to Floridia, the Syracusans rode 
round the great spring of Kyane,“ skirted the hill of 
the Olympieum on the west side 1 ney reached the 
camp. They then endeavoured to tu. ‘the Athenians 
out to fight, but without success, and naving failed in 
this first attempt they withdrew, crossed the road that 
led to Helorus, and bivouacked for the night. 


124 The Rulers of the South 


The battle took place on the following day, and Thu- 
cydides describes it with graphic clearness. The Athe- 
nians drew up their forces before their camp, taking 
the centre themselves, with the Argives on the right 
and the rest of the allies on the left. They divided 
their forces into two portions, half of which were drawn 
up in advance, eight deep, while the rest were formed 
in a hollow square behind them close to the tents. 
Opposite them, and therefore facing the sea, the Syra- 
cusans placed their heavy infantry in a line sixteen 
deep, having their twelve hundred horse on their right 
towards the Olympieum, and the road, which they had 
again crossed, being behind them. 

Before the Athenians began the attack, Nicias made 
a short speech to the soldiers, in which he did not rise 
above the level of his usual dulness on such occasions. 
It appears that even at the last moment the Syra- 
cusans did not really believe that there was to be a bat- 
tle, and that some of them even rode away to the city 
to. their homes. Nevertheless, when the time came, 
they took up their arms and advanced to meet the 
Athenians. The stone-throwers, slingers, and archers 
skirmished on each side, driving each other backwards 
and forwards. Under cover of the heavy infantry the 
priests in their robes and fillets brought up victims to 
sacrifice on the field of battle, and at last the trumpets 
sounded the general charge of the heavy-armed men on 
each side. So they rushed upon each other, the Syra- 


The Greeks 125 


cusans to fight for their lives, their country, and their 
freedom, the Athenians for the hope of conquest and 
wholesale robbery. 

The forces met with the shock of heavy arms and 
fought savagely hand to hand, the Athenians with the 
coolness and steady fence of veteran soldiers, the Syra- 
cusans with fitfully furious energy ; and when the com- 
bat was at its height all along the line the sky grew 
suddenly dark and a great storm burst upon the field 
with thunder and lightning and much rain. The expe- 
rienced Athenians laughed at the tempest, but the Syra- 
cusans were suddenly chilled and disheartened; the 
Argives drove in their left wing, the Athenian centre 
forced back the other, and in a few moments their lines 
were broken. Yet the Athenians could not pursue 
them far, for the Syracusan cavalry, which had not suf- 
fered, charged again and again and held them in check. 
So they returned to their camp, and collecting the rich- 
est armour from the slain, set up a trophy after their 
manner; but the Syracusans, though they had been 
defeated, retired in good order, and sent a garrison up 
to the temple of Zeus on the Olympieum to protect the 
treasure there before they returned to the city. The 
Athenians, however, made no attack upon the sacred 
building, and immediately proceeded to burn their dead 
upon a funeral pile. On the following day, under a 
truce, they restored to the Syracusans their dead to the 
number of about two hundred and sixty and collected 


126 The Rulers of the South 


the ashes and bones of their own, who numbered not 
more than fifty; and thereupon they launched their 
ships again and sailed back to Catania. They spent 
the rest of the winter there and in Naxos, after ascer 
taining that Messina was too cold. Nicias seemea 
incapable of following up an advantage, and moreover 
it was winter, and the Greeks seemed to have consid- 
ered it impossible to fight successfully, even in such a 
climate as that of Sicily, except in the summer months. 
The consequence was that the Syracusans had ample 
time to remedy the defects in their organization which 
had been evident in the first engagement; they elected 
three competent generals, despatched envoys to Corinth 
and Sparta, and built a great wall of defence on the 
mainland between the city and Epipole. They also 
erected palisades along the beach wherever it was easy 
to land and built forts at Megara on the north, and on 
the Olympieum. 

Meanwhile Alcibiades had established himself in 
Sparta, and was exciting his old enemies the Lace- 
dzmonians to make a general attack upon Athens, by 
way of revenging himself for having been unjustly 
sentenced to death. 

“And now,” he said, addressing the Lacedamonians 
at the conclusion of a long speech, “I entreat that 
you may not think the worse of me because I am 
now strenuously attacking my own country on the side 
of its bitterest enemies, though I once was called a 


The Greeks ly, 


patriot; for though I am an exile from Athens by 
the villainy of those who banished me, I am not one 
here, if you will hearken to my words; and the party 
that was really hostile to me was not you, who only 
hurt your enemies, but rather they who compelled 
their friends to become their foes. I was a patriot 
while I safely enjoyed my civil rights; I am none 
now, since I am wronged, for I am turning against 
the land that is still my country, and I am recover- 
ing that country which is mine no more.” 

The speech was well timed, the man’s reputation in 
Greece was enormous, and the advice he gave the 
Spartans was diabolically wise. He planted a thorn 
in the side of Athens which weakened her resources 
and hastened her defeat in Sicily, if it did not directly 
cause it, and he taught his former fellow-citizens and 
present enemies to believe that he alone could save 
them from destruction; and besides following his advice 
in other respects the Spartans deliberated with Corinth 
about sending help to the Sicilians. Meanwhile, the 
Athenians had sent a trireme to Athens, asking for 
money and for cavalry, without which they felt unable 
to meet the Syracusans on equal terms; and when 
the spring was come, the Athenian force did some 
damage to the Sicilian crops near Syracuse, but gained 
no signal advantage. Athens sent them money, but 
only sent two hundred and fifty horsemen, without 
horses, supposing that they could be mounted in Sicily. 


128 The Rulers of the South 


They afterwards got about four hundred more cavalry 
from Segesta and Naxos, and from the Sicelians. 
The Syracusans had in the meantime finished their 
wall, completely enclosing the city with its suburbs 
towards Epipole, from the harbour to the sea on the 
north, and taking in the theatre, the ridge above it, and 
the quarter called Temenites, from a portion of it sacred 
to Apollo, as well as the extensive inhabited suburb 
called Tyche, the whole being a gigantic piece of 
work, but extremely necessary for defence. It must 
have followed very nearly the modern road by which 
one drives from the esplanade northwards, and out 
of which, to the right, the narrower road leads, at 
right angles, to the Latomia dei Cappuccini. The 
Syracusans knew that when they were at last besieged 
the Athenians would attempt a systematic circumvalla- 
tion, and try to blockade them by land and sea and 
starve them out; for in those days of small armies, 
the besiegers rarely ran the risk of losing a number 
of men in an assault. The Carthaginians alone, who 
did not fight themselves, but employed mercenaries 
altogether, sacrificed men with the recklessness famil- 
iar in modern warfare. From the great wall they 
had built, the Syracusans hoped to throw out counter- 
walls at right angles to westward, so as to hinder the 
Athenian works. Before the siege was over the Syra- 
cusans alone had built seven and a half miles of 
fortified stone wall, a fact which gives some insight 


The Greeks 129 


attack and defence. But 
even after building the first great wall, the Syracusans 


into ancient methods of 


saw that it was more or less commanded by the still 


ND AW Wi itl. . 


/ tt vill Sf 
NS li ki i lil i la Wil i 


uryaluS Papdalum a 


{ 


sill 


ow 


Ny 





Neo 





SYRACUSE Le) Wore aw wS yy 
} 41) HW OM Ze GA 
B.C. 414-138. "5 / 


ayy wo 


eum sh 
City 


i} 
VY) 














AA. Wall of Gee gia. 


EF. First section of intrench- 
BBB. Wall of outer city. ments. 
BCD. Wall enclosing all the FG. Upper section of  in- 
suburbs. trenchments, 
Ii. First counter-wall. 


J. Third counter-wall. 
I. Second counter-wall. 


higher ground of Epipolze, which means the upper 
town, and they selected for the defence of that place 


a band of six hundred chosen heavy-armed men, who 
VOL. I 


K 


130 The Rulers of the South 


afterwards distinguished themselves in many feats of 
courage. 

The siege now began in earnest. The Athenians 
did not bring their fleet into Syracuse at first, but 
anchored in the small but safe natural harbour of 
Thapsus, just north of the Syracusan promontory, and 
surprised Epipole while the Syracusans were review- 
ing their troops in the meadow below. After some 
desperate fighting, in which the leader of the six hun- 
dred was killed, the Athenians remained in possession 
of the high ground, whence they descended after the 
usual truce for burying the dead, and offered battle 
before the new wall. But the Syracusans would not 
face them, and the Athenians then proceeded to 
fortify the heights, constructing a storehouse there 
for their baggage and money. They had previously 
provided themselves with an immense supply of bricks 
and building tools, which they brought up from Thap- 
sus, and the road they built, some of which is hewn 
in the rock, is still distinctly traceable. They hastened 
to begin the tedious work of circumvallation by con- 
structing a circular fort of which the nearest point 
was about half a mile from the Syracusan wall. Not 
a trace remains of those works. The fort was in- 
tended as a starting-point from which to build a 
fortification north and south. Such was the extraor- 
dinary rapidity with which they worked that the 
Syracusans hastily determined upon a sally that 


The Greeks 131 


ended in a cavalry engagement on the broken ground, 
in which the Athenians ultimately succeeded in bring- 
ing up a detachment of infantry and got the better 
of the fight. 

It was but a small affair, however, and the Athenians 
had no sooner begun to build their wall northwards 
from the central point, at’ the same time collecting 
stones, lumber, and other material along the _pro- 
_ jected line, than the Syracusans set to work to 
build a counter-work due west in order to intersect 
that of the Athenians. The Athenian fleet being still 
at Thapsus, the Athenians were obliged to bring up 
their provisions and materials from that place to Epi- 
pole by land. . The Athenians next succeeded in cut- 
ting off at least one of the aqueducts which supplied 
the city with water. Then, one day, when the Syra- 
cusans had completed their first counter-wall and 
had retired within their tents during the noonday 
heat, some having even returned to the city, the 
Athenians suddenly sent a strong picked force at 
full speed to seize the counter-wall, moving up the 
rest of their army in two divisions at the same time. 
The counter-wall appears to have been at first lightly 
constructed as a sort of stockade with stones heaped 
up against it, and the Athenian advance guard had 
no difficulty in taking possession of it and in tearing 
it down. The Athenians then carried off the material 
to their own lines and erected a trophy, which they 


132 The Rulers of the South 


did on every occasion when they had obtained the 
smallest advantage. Works and counter-works were 
now carried on with the greatest energy for some 
days, and when the Athenians considered that their 
works were sufficient they ordered their fleet to sail 
round from Thapsus into the great harbour, whither 
they themselves descended, crossing the swamp in 
the firmest part by laying planks upon the mud. 
And here again a short and bloody engagement was 
fought near the river Anapus, and the Syracusans 
succeeded in driving in the picked three hundred of 
the Athenian van, which produced something like a 
panic among the heavy-armed troops upon whom 
they fell back. Lamachus, seeing the danger, came 
up at full speed with a few archers and a body of 
Argives, crossed a ditch, and being followed only by 
a few men, was surrounded and killed, the Syra- 
cusans carrying off his body in triumph just as the 
main Athenian force came up. 

Seeing from a distance that the Athenians had lost 
the bravest and most energetic of their officers, those 
of the Syracusans who had at first been driven back 
to the city took heart and came back to charge the 
Athenians once more, and destroyed a thousand feet 
of a new outwork built by the enemy upon the 
heights of Epipole. But within the lines Nicias him- 
self lay ill, and he at once ordered his attendants to 
set fire to all the timber collected at that point so as 


The Greeks 133 


to defend himself by a wall of flame, for he had no 
soldiers with him. So the Syracusans withdrew 
as the Athenians were bringing up reénforcements. 
At that moment the fleet from Thapsus entered the 
great harbour, and the whole Syracusan army imme- 
diately retired into the city. 

Matters now looked very badly for the besieged. 
The Athenians continued their works unhindered, and 
built a double wall down to the harbour not far from 
the city gate. From all parts of Italy provisions 
began to arrive in great quantities, and the Sicelians, 
seeing that the invaders were getting the advantage, 
offered themselves as allies. The Syracusans had 
received no answer from Sparta, and supposing them- 
selves deserted by their friends lost hope altogether, 
for they were completely cut off from the mainland 
by the circumvallation, and the Athenian fleet had 
destroyed their communications by sea. They began 
to discuss terms of capitulation, and to treat with 
Nicias, who held the sole command after the death 
of Lamachus. There was confusion within the city, 
they had lost confidence in their generals and chose 
others, they were entirely dependent upon Arethusa 
for their water, which therefore had to be carried 
nearly three miles to supply the furthest extremity of 
Achradina, and it was clear that before long there 
would be a scarcity of provisions. 


But at the very moment when despair was settling 


134 The Kulerstor thes south 


upon the Syracusans help was at hand. The Spartans 
had despatched Gylippus to the aid of the beleaguered 
city, and he was already off the Italian coast. Hewasa 
man of brilliant resources and untiring energy, a most 
complete contrast in mind and character to the hesi- 
tating but obstinate Nicias who was soon to be his 
opponent. The latter had heard of his expedition and 
looked upon him with scorn, considering him to be 
rather a pirate than a general, for he had only about 
fifteen ships and no great number of soldiers. But 
he possessed in abundance the military genius which 
was wholly lacking in Nicias, and nothing else was 
necessary to turn the fortunes of war. 

After experiencing violent storms and being obliged 
to refit in Tarentum, instead of making directly for 
Syracuse, by which course he would probably have 
been obliged to fight the Athenians at sea, he sailed 
round by the north and picked up considerable auxil- 
lary forces in Himera, Selinus, and Gela. Meanwhile 
Corinth had sent more ships, and the one which put 
to sea last of all, but was the fastest sailor, reached 
Syracuse first, just in time to prevent the Syracusans 
from capitulating. Gylippus appears to have left his 
ships either at Himera or at Gela. By forced marches 
and with less than three thousand men he arrived 
suddenly under the heights of Epipole. The Syra- 
cusans meanwhile came out in force and effected a 
junction with the army of rescue. A better general 


The Greeks 135 


than Nicias would have prevented the enemy from 
obtaining such an advantage, and it proved his ruin. 
The united forces now seized the heights, and the 
Athenians formed to give them battle. Gylippus sent 
forward a herald with a daring message to the Athe- 
nians. They might choose, he said, whether they would 
depart from Sicily within five days or remain where 
they were and fight to an issue. The Athenians 
returned no answer and sent the herald back with 
contempt. Nicias had chosen, and his choice had 
fallen upon his own destruction. Gylippus boldly 
seized the Athenian fort on the height and slew the 
garrison, and on the same day the Syracusans cap- 
tured one of the Athenian triremes. The Syracusans 
then set to work upon building an enormous wall, over 
two miles in length, from the city right across Epipole, 
thus effectually shutting off the Athenians from the 
sea on the north side. 

Nicias now made that mistake which has been con- 
sidered to be his greatest by military men. He wasted 
time and labour in fortifying the Plemmyrium, south 
of the great harbour, and he transferred thither the 
greater part of his stores, regardless of the scanty water 
supply in the newly occupied region. By this time 
also the other Corinthian vessels were known to be 
rapidly approaching, so that Nicias was obliged to 
send out twenty armed vessels to cruise in search of 
his assailants. 


136 = “The -Kulers ot “the south 


Gylippus experienced a slight reverse, for he at- 
tacked the Athenians in the narrow space between 
their works and his, where the Syracusan cavalry 
had no room to manceuvre and was consequently 
useless. Once more the Syracusans were driven back 
with slaughter, and the Athenians erected another 
trophy. Undaunted by this check, however, Gylippus 
rallied his men with an energetic speech, continued 
the works actively, and waited for a more favourable 
opportunity. It was not long in coming. Gylippus 
succeeded in giving battle in the broad space where 
the works connected with both walls ended; the 
Syracusan cavalry charged the Athenian flank at 
furious speed, while the heavy infantry engaged the 
centre. The Athenians were completely routed, and 
during the night that followed the whole Syracusan 
force worked at the wall. In the morning it had 
reached the Athenian works and crossed them, and 
all hope of completely investing the city was lost. 

Fortune now favoured the Syracusans in every way. 
The Corinthian vessels eluded the flying squadron 
which Nicias had sent out to cruise for them, and 
entered the harbour unexpectedly, before the Athe- 
nians could get ships under way to oppose them. Reén- 
forced by the arrival of these allies, the Syracusans 
completed their works, and began to get their own 
ships ready for sea and to exercise their crews. Gylip- 
pus then made a journey through Sicily to raise more 


The Greeks 137 


troops and money from the friendly cities, and sent 
messages to Sparta and Corinth asking for further 
help, for the Athenians were sending to Athens to 
make a similar request. 

Indeed, the letter written by Nicias and read aloud 
in Athens by the secretary of state is a confession of 
powerlessness, if not of defeat, and is, moreover, a sin- 
gularly honest statement of the situation; for he frankly 
says therein that from being the besieger he was be- 
come the besieged, that his ships were leaky and could 
neither be beached nor hove down for caulking, in the 
face of the enemy’s fleet; that it was becoming ex- 
tremely difficult and dangerous to get supplies of food, 
either from Italy or the island, and that he himself was 
almost helpless from nephritis. 

Both parties, Corinth and Sparta on the one hand, 
and Athens on the other, responded in the most liberal 
way to these appeals. The Athenians sent ten ships at 
once, and sixty later on under Demosthenes, with sev- 
eral thousand men; and Gylippus having raised large 
reénforcements in Sicily, the armies on both sides 
began to assume formidable proportions. At this time, 
Demosthenes not having yet arrived, Gylippus planned 
an engagement which, though only in part successful, 
ultimately decided the fortunes of the war. A part of 
the Syracusan fleet lay in the small harbour outside of 
Ortygia and north of it; the rest were anchored in the 
great harbour within a sort of defence made by driving 


138 The Rulers of the South 


huge piles into the bottom, leaving about twenty feet pro- 
jecting above water, witha narrow entrance. The leader 
determined upon a general battle, by land and sea; the 
two divisions of the Syracusan fleet were to sail round 
the opposite sides of Ortygia and effect a junction at 
the mouth of the harbour, where the Athenian ships 
would of course meet them, and, as Gylippus hoped, 
would be caught between them and easily destroyed. 
Meanwhile, he himself intended to march his army 
round the bay and storm the forts on Plemmyrium. 
It was clear that if both movements succeeded, the 
Athenians would be caught in the harbour like mice, 
with no possibility of escape. 

The operation began under cover of the night, of 
course, and the engagement opened at daybreak. The 
Athenians, warned, perhaps, of their danger, succeeded 
in getting thirty-five ships out of the harbour in time to 
engage the outer Syracusan division in open water, 
while, with twenty-five more, the inner squadron of the 
Syracusans was kept at bay. The outer squadron 
forced its way through the Athenian ships, instead of 
driving them in, or sinking them, and was caught, as 
they should have been. The fighting continued in the 
harbour, and eleven of the Syracusans vessels were 
sunk and most of their crews killed. The remainder 
of the fleet withdrew inside the stockade of piles, badly 
damaged. The Athenians only lost three vessels. 
Nevertheless, the result of the day was a victory for 


The Greeks 139 


Syracuse. Gylippus had carried out his plan on land 
without a check. He had seized Plemmyrium, with its 
three forts, its vast stores of grain and lumber, and the 
considerable treasure which was deposited there. He 
razed one of the forts to the ground and placed strong 
garrisons in the other two. The Syracusans now held 
every point, all round the bay, from the city to Plem- 
myrium, the Athenians were driven back to their old 
camp below the Olympieum, opposite the entrance of 
the harbour, and, being completely hemmed in by land, 
were obliged to fight their way in and out of the har- 
bour in order to maintain communications and receive 
supplies. Their destruction was now clearly a ques- 
tion of time. 

They exerted every energy to prevent the safe arri- 
val of the Corinthian reénforcements, and made des- 
perate attempts to destroy the ships anchored within 
the stockade. To this end they moved up to it one of 
their largest ships, a vessel of ten thousand talents’ 
burden, equal to about two hundred and fifty tons by 
our measurement, fitted with cranes and windlasses 
that were protected by armoured screens; and making 
fast ropes to the piles as far below water as possible, 
they hove them out and towed them away. There 
were divers among the Athenians who, for a reward, 
went down with saws and sawed some of the piles off 
at such a depth that the stumps could not injure the 
vessels; and the Syracusans had also:purposely driven 


140 The Rulers of the South 


in stakes in certain places, below the surface, that the 
Athenian ships might run upon them, but these also 
the divers succeeded in sawing away. Now no man 
can work at sawing below water for more than thirty 
or forty seconds at a time without coming up for 
breath, so that the divers must have worked many 
hours, and perhaps a whole day, at cutting through a 
single pile. The Syracusans, however, were not slow 
to replace those which the Athenians removed or de- 
stroyed, and the latter gained no advantage in that 
way, while the difficulty of obtaining provisions in- 
creased daily, and the malarious fever caused by the 
Lysimeleian swamp in the summer months made rav- 
ages in the Athenian camp. 

At this juncture the fleet commanded by Demos- 
thenes appeared off Syracuse in magnificent array. 
Seventy-three galleys sailed down in even order, their 
signals streaming on the wind, their richly adorned 
and painted bows rising high above the blue water, 
From the decks gleamed the shields and helmets of 
five thousand heavy-armed men, and as they neared 
Ortygia, soldiers and seamen raised the song of war and 
the loud Grecian trumpets blared out triumphant notes. 

Demosthenes intended to terrify the Syracusans by 
making all the display of military and naval power of 
which he could dispose, and the Syracusans almost lost 
heart again at the approach of a new host of enemies. 
As soon as Demosthenes had landed he proposed to 


The Greeks 141 


Nicias to make a general attack by sea and land, and 
if his advice had been taken, a signal success might 


have been gained. But Nicias had grown timid and 


was broken down by illness, and Plutarch even says 





STREET OF ANCIENT TOMBS, SYRACUSE 


that he had an understanding with certain traitors in 
Syracuse, who advised him to wait patiently, as the 
inhabitants were weary of the war and of the exact- 
ing energy of Gylippus, and would soon begin to 


142 The Rulers of the South 


dispute among themselves. But Demosthenes in- 
spired the Athenians with courage and at last suc- 
ceeded in carrying his point. He determined to make 
a night attack upon Epipole, and taking the guards 
by surprise he slew a great number and was hasten- 
ing on, supposing that he had carried the position, 
when he suddenly came upon the Bceotian detach- 
ment, which was already under arms. Uttering their 
tremendous war-cry, they closed up with levelled 
spears and charged the Athenians with the force of 
a solid mass. The young moon was hastening to her 
setting, and shed an uncertain light. The wildest 
confusion fell upon the Athenians as they fled in dis- 
order, or attacked each other, unable to distinguish 
their friends from their foes. The faint moonlight, 
reflected upon the gleaming shields of the Syracusans 
and upon their glittering arms, made them appear ten 
times more numerous, and as the victorious force pre- 
served its compact order, shoulder to shoulder, every 
soldier knew that he had only foes before him and 
friends behind, every thrust went home and every 
blade was dyed in Athenian blood. Many, in their 
flight, fell from the low cliffs and were killed, a few 
lost themselves in the fields beyond Epipole while 
attempting to escape, and as the dawn lightened, the 
Syracusan horse scoured the country and cut down 
every straggler. Between midnight and morning two 
thousand Athenians had perished. 


The Greeks 143 


Nicias had expected nothing better, but yet he would 
not hear of a general retreat, and Demosthenes, hav- 
ing failed in his first enterprise, attempted no further 
action for some time. At last, as fresh reénforcements 
strengthened the Syracusan army, Nicias reluctantly 
consented to withdraw and gave the order to embark 
the troops. But on that very night, the moon, being 
full, was totally eclipsed, and not only Nicias himself, 
but all the Greeks with him, were paralyzed with fear 
by what they considered a terrific portent. After con- 
sulting a diviner, Nicias declared that the army could 
not embark until the moon had completed another 
revolution. He was approaching his destruction, and 
even nature seemed to conspire with ill fortune to 
ruin him. In total inactivity he passed his time in 
sacrificing to the gods, while his diviner consulted the 
auguries presented by the victims. His ships lay idly 
at anchor, their seams opening under the blazing sun; 
his disheartened soldiers made no attempt to prevent 
the Syracusans from hemming them in; hundreds 
died of the malarial sickness spread by the pestilen- 
tial swamp. The Syracusan fishermen and boatmen 
pulled out to the men-of-war and jeered at them, offer- 
ing them fight. A boy, Heraclides, the son of a great 
Syracusan house, ventured in a skiff close under an 
Athenian vessel that was unmoored, and reviled the 
captain amid the laughter of the other boys. Furious 
at being insulted by a child, the officer manned the 


144 The Rulers of the South 


oars and gave chase. Instantly ten Sicilian galleys, 
now always ready for fight, put out to save the lad, 
others followed, and a sharp engagement ensued in 
which the Syracusans did considerable damage to the 
Athenian vessels and slew a general and a number of 
men. 

The Syracusans lost no time in completely blocking 
the entrance of- the- harbour, after this successmane 
Nicias was reluctantly driven to fight where starvation 
and death by fever were the only alternatives. He 
embarked the best of his heavy infantry, and chosen 
detachments of archers and spearmen, manning a 
hundred and ten vessels, and he marshalled the rest 
of his army on the shore to await the event. 

It was the end. The swift Syracusan ships pulled 
out in wide order, provided with their catapults, and 
with vast numbers of stones which could be dis- 
charged with terrible effect at short range, and against 
which the Athenians had no missiles but darts and 
arrows. The Athenian fleet was so crowded together 
that the ships could barely advance, and were unable 
to execute any manceuvre; the Syracusans, on the con- 
trary, could charge, turn, and retire as they pleased; 
from the shore and from the city a hundred thousand 
spectators watched the struggle for life or death. 
Driven together upon each other, rammed and bat- 
tered by their assailants, the Athenian ships sank one 
by one with the living and the dead together, and 


The Greeks 145 


as the sun declined to the west what had been a 
battle became but a universal massacre; at evening 
the Athenian fleet was totally destroyed, and no alter- 
native remained for the survivors ashore but to cut 
their way through the Syracusan lines in a hopeless 
attempt to escape by land. Gylippus would have 
fallen upon them in their camp without delay, but 
the Syracusans, in wild rejoicing at their great vic- 
tory, could not be induced to postpone a universal 
feast. Hermocrates, however, whose counsels and 
ready wit had helped his countrymen throughout the 
war, sent a treacherous message to Nicias, warning 
him that every pass was held and every point of the 
works completely manned, and he was deceived and 
waited for the morning. Then indeed the Syracusans, 
having feasted and rested, went out and held the 
whole line during all that day and the following 
night. At last the Athenians, still forty thousand 
strong, began to move, going up from their camp 
with tears and loud lamentations, and leaving their 
sick and wounded behind them. They broke a pas- 
sage through the lines indeed, but the whole Syra- 
cusan force was upon them, flanking them continually, 
following them, and slaying them like sheep as they 
struggled hopelessly and almost without food through 
the valley towards Floridia. Eight days the massacre 
lasted, until there was no hope, and the remnant of 
the greatest army of that age surrendered uncondi- 


VOL. I L 


146 The Rulers of the South 


tionally to Spartan Gylippus. Some say that Demos- 
thenes and Nicias killed themselves, and this is more 
likely, but others say that the Syracusans stoned them 
to death. Then the Syracusans dressed those tall 
trees that still grow by the river for miles, with 
the arms of their fallen foes, making blood-stained 
trophies all the way; and they plucked leaves and 
autumn flowers and made themselves garlands for 
their helmets and adorned their horses too; and thus 
marched back in a glorious triumph, driving their 
prisoners before them; for the war was over, and of 
all the vast armament that had come against Syracuse 
not one vessel was ever to return to Greece, and not 
one man had escaped to bear arms or to lift a hand 
against the victorious city, but all were dead or slaves. 
There was not even one to bring the frightful news to 
Athens, and it was late in the autumn when a travel- 
ling merchant carelessly told the story to a barber 
in the Pirzus, supposing that all Greece knew it. 
Thus ended the great Athenian expedition, and thus 
was Alcibiades revenged. 

Forty thousand men had left the Athenian camp to 
begin the retreat. After the battle about seven thou- 
sand prisoners remained alive. They suffered a hideous 
condemnation ; let any one who wishes to understand 
their fortunes go down into the great quarries of Syra- 
cuse and see for himself; for, saving that the quarries 


are larger now than they were then and full of trees 





“* 














The Greeks 147 


and flowers, they are the same in their shape and in 
their appalling isolation. They are still called the 
Latomie, the ‘ places of stone cutting,’ and the tale of 
what once happened in them is told still, handed down 
perhaps without a break, through the changing genera- 
tions of many races of inhabitants, Greeks, Romans, 
Saracens, Normans, Spaniards, and Italians. They are 
situated on an irregular line which leads eastward from 
the one nearest to the theatre, across Achradina to the 
last and most extensive of all, called the Latomia dei 
Cappuccini, which is very near the sea. In all that 
region the soil is thin but very rich, and below it the 
yellowish white stone lies in a solid mass, perhaps hun- 
dreds of feet deep. Straight down from the surface 
the stone has been quarried to a depth of from eighty 
to a hundred feet, making sheer walls of rock on every 
side, so that the only means of descent is by wooden 
ladders, and neither man nor beast can scale the height 
without help from above. Below, it is all an enchanted 
garden now; two thousand and three hundred years ago 
it was a bare quarry of white stone, strewed with stone 
chips and stone dust. By day the sun beat down into 
it, with the glare of the unpitying sky, and was reflected 
from its sides, and the rock radiated an intolerable heat; 
at evening the upper air, suddenly chilled at sunset, 
rushed down and filled it with an icy dampness. A 
furnace in summer, bitterly cold in winter, a fever hole 


in the autumn rains, a hell at all times save in spring, 


148 The Rulers of the South 


the Syracusans found it ready to their hand to be a 
place of torture and death for their beaten enemies. 
Therefore they let them down into it by the cranes that 





PATH UNDER ROCKS, LATOMIA DEI CAPPUCCINI, SYRACUSE 


served to lift the stone, being seven thousand men in 
all; and lest it should be said that they had starved 
prisoners to death, they sent down to them rations, for 


every man half a pint of water every day, or very little 


The Greeks 149 


more, and twice as much of raw barley or other grain ; 
and this was only half the measure of food that was 
given to common slaves in those days, and the slaves 
had water in abundance. 

Now among the miserable captives there were many 
who had been wounded in the last fight and had been 
taken alive, and these suffered less, for they died first, 
of their injuries and of fever. But the strong and the 
well lived on in torment, and the bodies of the dead lay 
in the quarry among the living, and the poison of death 
made the air horrible to breathe, so that mortal sickness 
fell upon the strongest, and they died daily, while each 
dead man became a new source of pestilence. Ten weeks 
long they died, and yet they were not all dead; and 
when the sun was declining, and the people of Syracuse 
went out to taste the sea breeze, many came and stood 
at the edge of the quarry, on the windward side, lest 
their nostrils should be offended, and looked down at 
men who were rotting alive, all that remained of the 
great Athenian army, men who were not men, but halt- 
clad skeletons, scarce moving or breathing between the 
heaps of shapeless corpses that had been their friends. 
And the fine ladies of Syracuse held little vials of scent 
to their noses and leaned upon their slaves’ arms, and 
looked down curiously; for the Athenians had been 
handsome men. 7 

When seventy days had gone by, the Syracusans 
took out those of the living who were not Athenians, 


150 The Rulers of the South 


and sold them for slaves, many being not worth a day’s. 
purchase; but they left the Athenians to suffer a little 
longer, and when at last they brought them up, they 
heated branding-irons red hot, and branded them all in 
the forehead with the mark of the Syracusan horse, and 
sold them as slaves for the public benefit. Yet amid so 
much shadow of cruelty there is one redeeming light. 
The Syracusans loved the verses of the tragic poet 
Euripides above all other poetry, and in the great 
theatre, carved with its high ranks of seats from the 
solid rock in the hollow side of the mountain, they had 
been used to sit enthralled and listen to the ‘Medea’ 
and the ‘ Alcestis’ and the other great plays, through 
long summer afternoons, when the sun was_ behind 
them, and behind the mountains. Among the Athenian 
captives there were many who could repeat and sing 
long passages from Euripides’ plays; and these men 
were favoured far above the others when they were 
sold as slaves, so that some of them were even freed for 
the poet's sake, and long afterwards went back and 
found him and thanked him, branded though they were, 
for life and liberty. Nothing we know of to tell, and 
no story thata man might build up with the material 
of imagination, could show as this does the difference 
between that age and ours. There was divinity in the 
poet then, and his inspiration was from a god, deserving 
to be worshipped and revered as a heavenly gift; and 
those who had skill to sing his words, as he would 


The Greeks 151 


have them sung, were sharers in his genius and blessed 
with a talent half divine, which others recognized and 
loved. 

There is a sort of taste in nations which belongs to 
their young days, when they have not done their best, a 


living and creative taste that is closely akin to hope 





Ai Gin 
[ OLD WELL IN THE LATOMIA DEI 
CAPPUCCINI, SYRACUSE 


and aspiration; and there is another sort that comes 
with decadence and is satisfied more with the past than 
with the present or the future, that knows neither the 
elation of hope nor the satisfaction that lies in creation, 
but which is easily cast down, sad, self-tormenting, 
and as often a source of pain as of pleasure. So the 
degenerate Sybarite writhed upon a ruffled rose leaf 


152 The Rulers of the South 


and ached at the sight of a man digging hard ground, 
and thé modern exquisite utters poor little cries of 
distress at the sound of a false note or the glare of a 
false colour. 

In those days Sicily was in the stronger, brighter, 
earlier stage of life, and it would have asserted itself in 
a vast artistic productiveness after the failure of the 
Athenian invasion, if that event had been followed by a 
period of peace. The first impulse of the Syracusans 
and of the other free Greek cities of Sicily was to build 
temples and to raise up statues to the gods, in grati- 
tude for the greatest victory ever won by Greeks over 
Greeks; and as peace followed war, and plenty grew 
up where famine had followed the destruction of crops, 
the hearts of the people were lightened and the song of 
rejoicing filled the land. While the law-givers they 
chose at home were occupied in framing a code that 
would not disgrace a modern civilization, Sicilian fleets 
and Sicilian soldiers sailed eastward to the islands and 
even to the shores of Asia Minor, paying back war 
with war, allied with the Peloponnesians for the final 
destruction of Athens, the common enemy, and bringing 
home shiploads of treasure and booty. Could this 
condition of things have lasted, there is no telling to 
what heights the prosperity of Sicily might have risen 
in a few years. But the old causes were at work to 
produce new disasters ; the Athenians had invaded the 


island ostensibly to rignt the wiongs inflicted upon 


The Greeks 153 


Segesta by Selinus and on Leontini by Syracuse; in 
the terrific struggle with Syracuse, Selinus had been 
more than half forgotten, and one year’s crop had not 
been sown and reaped before those very circumstances 
renewed themselves which had led to the destruction of 
a great fleet and of sixty thousand men. The Selinun- 
tians fancied that since Athens had fallen they could 
harass their old enemies at their pleasure, and boldly 
crossing the border they made havoc of the Segestan 
country. Now the land subject to Segesta lay in a 
broad tract between the Phoenician colonies of Panormus 
and of Lilybaum, and a free and safe passage across 
was essential to the commerce of both, the distance 
by sea being far greater and the voyage not always 
free from danger. It was therefore to the interest of 
Carthage that Segesta, which had always been friendly 
to her, should not be overrun by the Selinuntians who 
had always been her enemies, and when Segesta ap- 
pealed to her for help as it had appealed to Athens 
some six years earlier, a ready assistance was granted on 
interested grounds. The despatching of a few thousand 
men to help the oppressed state had the natural result 
of sending Selinus to Syracuse for assistance in its turn, 
and Syracuse promised it readily, not dreaming of the 
magnitude of the undertaking. Carthage, mindful 
of the ignominious defeat suffered at the hands of 
the Syracusans in Himera seventy years earlier, and 


dreading lest, since Athens was fallen, Syracuse should 


154 The Rulers of the South 


obtain the empire of the Mediterranean, put forth all 
her strength and began to raise an enormous army. 
In the spring of the year 409 B.c. sixty Carthagin- 
ian men-of-war convoyed no less than fifteen hundred 
small vessels from Carthage to Lilybeum, carrying 
an army of something like two hundred thousand 
foot-soldiers and four thousand cavalry, together with 
an immense supply of war material and siege engines. 
At the head of this formidable force was the grand- 
son of Hamilcar, who had perished in his own sacri- 
fice at Himera. This was Hannibal, the second of 
the name who appears in history, and who is said to 
have sworn a solemn oath to avenge his grandsire. 
Landing on the headland of Lilybzeum, he at once 
began to lay waste the country, and moving rapidly 
forwards, attacked Selinus itself with all the energy 
which Nicias had lacked. He fell upon the city from 
the north; six iron-headed battering rams were brought 
to make a breach in the walls, six lofty towers, which 
overtopped the fortifications, slung masses of stone 
into the city, while slingers and archers picked off the 
defenders one by one. Nevertheless, the people de- 
fended themselves courageously, trusting to the speedy 
arrival of help from Syracuse. The young men fought, 
the old provided them with fresh weapons and mis- 
siles, and the women brought food and drink to the 
combatants. But Hannibal promised the soldiers the 
whole plunder of the city, and the siege was prose- 


The Greeks 155 


cuted with surprising energy. The men fought in 
watches and by turns, marching up to relieve each 
other with trumpet call and war-cry. Day and night 
the battering rams, hanging in their frames by iron 
chains, pounded the walls with the sound of unceas- 
ing thunder. A breach was broken, and Hannibal’s 
Campanian mercenaries charged in; but as their need 
grew greater the defenders fought more desperately, 
and the first attack was repulsed with frightful 
slaughter. Messengers rode for life and death to 
Akragas and Gela and Syracuse, bearing the news of 
their city’s supreme need. But it was too late. 
The battering rams still pounded at the wall, and 
Saumethe catapults hurled huge- stones from the 
towers; the breach was widened and held by the 
enemy, while still the defenders fought like madmen 
and looked eastward for help through nine long days. 
Driven back from the breach at last, as a great cry 
of woe went up from their women, they defended 
themselves to the end. They threw up barricades of 
stones, fighting from street to street; the old men, 
the wounded, the women and the children, climbed to 
the roofs and dashed down stones and tiles upon the 
Carthaginians. But at last it was over and the city 
was won. Then fire and the sword did the rest, for 
Hannibal knew his men and kept his word and gave 
them their hearts’ desire. Slaying every living thing 
they met, they broke into every house, flung the booty 


156 The Rulérs*of the South 


into the streets, and set each dwelling on fire before they 
left the door. The soldiers paraded the streets, bearing 
on their spears the heads of the vanquished, and 
hideous festoons of hands cut off and strung together. 
Only those women and children were spared who had 
taken refuge in the temples, and not from any rev- 
erence for the gods, but in fear lest they should 
fire the temples in self-defence and destroy the rich 
treasures preserved there. On that day sixteen thou- 
sand lives fell to the Carthaginian ‘swords; less than 
three thousand persons escaped alive to Akragas, and, 
weary of slaughter, the victors carried off five thousand 
prisoners. 

Then at last the first three thousand of the Syra- 
cusan troops appeared and sent heralds demanding 
that Hannibal should at least respect the temples and 
give up their prisoners for a ransom; but Hannibal 
answered roughly that since the Selinuntians had not 
been able to defend their freedom they must learn to 
be slaves, and so far as the temples were concerned 
the gods appeared to have abandoned both them and 
their city. From this destruction Selinus never re- 
covered. 

Hannibal crossed unhindered to Himera next, and 
proceeded at once to a formal siege, undermining the 
walls and soon producing a wide breach. A Syra- 
cusan fleet of five and thirty sail came in sight, and 
the hopes of the city rose to enthusiasm; but by 


The Greeks 157 


treacherous messages Hannibal made the admiral of 
the fleet believe that he was about to raise the siege 
because the whole Syracusan army was advancing by 
land, and that Syracuse being therefore undefended 
he intended to attack it without delay. The admiral 
made ready to go to the rescue, and seeing them- 
selves about to be deserted, a great part of the pop- 
ulation abandoned the city to the enemy, crowding 
the ships until there was no more room, and the 
remainder marching out by land. On the following 
day the Carthaginians entered Himera; the women 
and children were carried out to the camp to be sold 
as slaves in Africa, and on the spot where his grand- 
sire had perished, Hannibal appeased his unquiet — 
spirit by the mutilation and slaughter of three thou- 
sand Himeran warriors. Last of all he burned the 
whole city and razed the ruins to the ground. 

Here in the story appears for the last time Hermoc- 
rates, in a short and brilliant campaign that ended in 
his violent death at the gates of Syracuse. From the 
beginning of the Athenian invasion his counsels had 
helped Syracuse, his labours had been unceasing, his 
submission to the generalship of Gylippus exemplary ; 
he had seemed a man above passion, inspired only by 
the purest love of his country. But his country feared 
the return of a tyranny like that of Thrasybulus, and 
accusing him of plotting to get the despotism, Syracuse 
exiled her best and bravest. In exile he had not 


158 The Rulers of the South 


turned against the state, as Alcibiades had turned 
against Athens; he remained faithful and devoted, 
waiting and longing for an opportunity to return. He 
saw his chance when the Carthaginians withdrew after 
the final slaughter at Himera. Provided with large 
sums of money, he came to Messina, built five warships 
of his own and raised a thousand men. He collected 
the fugitives from Himera, sailed round to Selinus, and 
rapidly fortified the ruins left by the Carthaginians. 
Without losing time, but gathering an army of six 
thousand men, he dashed across the island, surprised 
Motye and Panormus, and laid waste the country. 
Even then Syracuse would not recall him from banish- 
ment. He marched down to Himera and collected 
from the field of battle the unburied bones of the Syra- 
cusans who had perished there, and sent them rever- 
ently to Syracuse; but yet his native city would not 
receive him back. Mad with longing to see his home, 
and believing that if he appeared in person, the false 
accusations against him would be forgotten, he rode 
with a few followers to the very gate of the city. His 
friends received him, but could not save his life, for his 
enemies spread the report that he had returned with an 
army, and they fell upon him and cruelly slew him on 
the threshold of his home. But some of his followers 
saved themselves, and though they were all banished, 
there was one among them who, being desperately 
wounded, was given out to be dead, and he escaped 


The Greeks 159 


the ban; he was Dionysius, who was to save Syracuse 
from the Carthaginians, and was to be her lord and des- 
pot before many years should pass. 

For soon the Carthaginians bethought themselves 
how they should avenge the raid made by Hermocrates 
upon the Phoenician west, and they fortified beforehand 
a strong place on the coast, which is now Termini, near 
Himera, and equipped another great army, under Han- 
nibal the victorious; and they brought over between 
two and three hundred thousand fighting men, to attack 
Akragas, rich in corn and wine and oil, as Girgenti is 
to-day. For the Akragantines were a _ peace-loving 
people who kept out of war and enriched themselves 
with agriculture and trade; and their city was beautiful 
with many temples, and with many monuments, some 
of which were even erected to the memory of horses 
that had won some famous race, and the maidens of 
Akragas sometimes built tombs for their favourite song- 
birds. There were also marvellous. paintings there, and 
there was vast wealth. Once, before this war, a certain 
Exainetos of Akragas won the two hundred yard race 
at Olympia, and when he came home, there went out to 
welcome him three hundred chariots drawn by as many 
pairs of milk-white horses. In their gymnasium the 
people used golden strigils and gold vessels for oil. At 
the door of the house of Gellias, a rich man of the 
city, slaves stood in waiting all day long, inviting every 


passing stranger to enter for rest and entertainment, 


160 The Rulers of the South 


and once, when five hundred riders came from Gela, 
Gellias took them all in, and presented each one with 
new garments, for it was winter. In his cellars, instead 
of casks and hogsheads, three hundred reservoirs for 
wine were hewn in the solid rock, and each one held 
one hundred amphore, which is equal to nearly nine 
hundred gallons. And of the Akragantines Empedo- 
cles said that they built as if they were to live for ever, 
but that they feasted as if they were to die on the mor- 
row ; and it is recorded that at a certain marriage eight 
hundred carriages and innumerable riders brought the 
bride home at night, while the whole city was illumi- 
nated. Moreover, during the war which now began, a 
decree was issued which forbade a soldier on the watch 
to be provided with more than two mattresses, two pil- 
lows, and a blanket. 

Nevertheless their allies defended them manfully 
for some time, and the strong position of their city 
helped them at need, as it had doubtless contributed 
to create that feeling of absolute security which is the 
most favourable condition for the development of idle- 
ness and luxury. It is easy to understand that even 
a slack defence of such a place might suffice to hold it. 
Standing on the ruined rampart of Girgenti, at the 
southeastern point, near the temple of Hera, the 
traveller can take in the extent of the city at a glance, 
from the modern town, where stood the ancient acrop- 


olis, cresting the hill, round by a wide descending 











LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 









The Greeks 161 


sweep to the right, then westward along the south 
side, protected by the abrupt falling away of the 
ground, and from beyond the temples of Zeus and 
the Dioscuri up the steep hill to the acropolis again. 
Only on this last stretch could Hannibal see any 
chance of success, where the old burial ground came 
up to the walls; and there he intrenched himself and 
set up his engines of attack, but the citizens sallied 
out and burned his wooden towers; in digging his 
trenches, he exposed a great number of dead bodies, 
from which a plague arose among his soldiers, and he 
himself died of the sickness. Then his father, Himil- 
con, lost six thousand men in an engagement with 
the Syracusans who were advancing to relieve the city. 
The Greeks were elated and contemplated making a 
destructive attack upon the Carthaginian camp. The 
besiegers, as the winter came on, were short of pro- 
visions; some even died of hunger; matters looked ill 
for the rest, and the mercenaries threatened to depart. 

But Himilcon learned that an immense supply of 
ccrn was on the way to Akragas from Syracuse. He 
bribed his soldiers to wait a few days, sent out war- 
ships, overcame the Greek triremes that formed the 
convoy, and seized the whole provision. Among the 
defenders were Spartans and other allies, who began 
to sell themselves to the Carthaginian general, and 
presently all the allies deserted almost in a body. 
The luxurious Akragantines were paralyzed with fear, 


Wolo vt M 


162 The Rulers of the South 


for they remembered the horrid fate of Selinus and 
Himera. Incredible as it must seem, though there was 
not so much as a breach in the walls, the whole pop- 
ulation abandoned the city, leaving the old and the 
sick to their fate. Himilcon entered at daybreak and 
slew all these. The rich Gellias had collected such 
of his treasures as he could gather quickly into a 
temple, to which he set fire, and he perished tte 
flames. A few patriots who would not fly destroyed 
themselves. The vast booty fell into the hands of the 
Carthaginians without a blow, and Akragas ceased to 
play a part in Sicily. There is hardly a parallel in 
all history to such an ignominious evacuation. 
Dionysius the scribe, who by the accident of his des- 
perate wound had escaped being banished with the 
friends of the murdered Hermocrates, was a man who 
possessed those gifts of courage, eloquence, and cun- 
ning by which obscure individuals have from time to 
time raised themselves suddenly to empire. Yet even 
such gifts as these could have produced no result with- 
out the opportunity for exercising them. After the fall 
of Akragas, which had been largely due to the defection 
of the more important allies for the sake of Himil- 
con’s rich bribes, a profound disgust of the existing 
government, under which such things were possible, 
manifested itself. among the Sicilian people; the 
conviction grew in the minds of the masses that 


although a democracy might be the best form of gov- 


The Greeks 163 


ernment in times of peace and prosperity, yet, in a 
moment of public danger, it was absolutely necessary 
that all military power should be in the hands of a sin- 


gle individual. The Sicilians had not 











the cool sense of fitness which made 
the Romans name a dictator during 
war, and return to republican forms 
as soon as it was ended. The Greek 
cities, and Syracuse first of all, felt the 
want of a strong hand; the days of 
the democracy were over, and it 
fell to the lot of the most talented 
man of his day to restore the 
tyranny. He began by ingra- 
tiating himself with the re- 
mains of Hermocrates’ 
party, and being sure 
of their support, he 
took the earliest op- 
portunity of exhibit- 
ing his eloquence at 7 
a general meeting of a 
the people. Himera, PEASANT NEAR REGGIO, CALABRIA 
Selinus, and Akragas 

had fallen a prey to the Carthaginians, their vast army 
was fattening on the spoil got from their latest con- 
quest, from Akragas they would march to Gela, and 


once there, the fate of Syracuse would be a foregone 


164 The Rulers of the South 


conclusion. The leaders hesitated, the people mur- 
mured, no one dared to speak out. Then Dionysius 
suddenly arose and impeached the Greek generals, 
the government, the rich and powerful throughout the 
land, taking, as every great adventurer has done at 
first, the side of the oppressed many against the over- 
bearing few ; nor did any ambitious man ever take that 
side in vain. Dionysius proposed that the generals 
responsible for the fall of Akragas should be punished 
summarily and without trial. This was against the law 
of Syracuse. A few of the aristocrats, with loud pro- 
tests, cried out that the speaker was liable at once to 
the fine imposed by law; but a friend of his rose 
instantly and bade him go on, saying that he would pay 
not only the fine imposed upon Dionysius, but all other 
fines exacted from any who should speak in the same 
spirit. With fiery energy Dionysius proceeded to the 
end; the generals were then and there degraded from 
their’ officey others were chosen in their ystead and 
among them Dionysius himself. From this to the sole 
command was a difficult step. He began by refusing to 
associate with his fellow generals, hinting that they 
were in secret understanding with the Carthaginians. . 
The people trusted him, and when he proposed that 
they should vote the immediate return of all political 
exiles, they acceded to his request without hesitation. 
By this means he gained a vast number of enthusiastic 
friends. 


The Greeks 165 


Another opportunity for gaining fresh power soon 
presented itself. It was clear that Gela would be the 
next city to fall, and its garrison was under the orders 
of one of the captains who had sold himself to Carthage 
at Akragas. Dionysius hastened thither, to find the 
city in a frenzy of excitement. He presented himself 
as the protector and liberator of the people, he paid 
the troops the stipend which had long been owing to 
them, and he brought the suspected traitors, chiefly the 
richest in the city, to prompt trial and execution, their 
property being seized for the public good. Having thus 
settled matters for a time, he returned with speed to 
Syracuse. [Entering the city at sunset, just as a great 
audience was leaving the theatre, and being asked what 
news he brought from Gela, he delivered a magnificent 
speech in which he told the people that their worst ene- 
mies were not the Carthaginians, but their own corrupt 
and grasping generals. They were selling their country 
inch by inch for Carthaginian gold, and he would no 
longer be one of them. His words were received with 
unbounded applause and wild acclamation; on the 
following day a public meeting of the people was called, 
he addressed them again, his friends rose up in ferce to 
support all he said, and amid the universal enthusiasm 
a measure was carried which removed the other generals 
from office, and conferred upon him the sole military 
command, 


The tyranny was now restored in fact, and all but 


166 The Rulers of the South 


acknowledged in name. Dionysius needed only a 
devoted body-guard to protect him from the assassin’s 
knife, in order to assume the position of absolute lord. 
He obtained this also, and by the same stratagem which 
had served Pisistratus for the same end. He called 
upon tHe whole available force of armed men which 
Syracuse could furnish, bidding them meet him in 
Leontini as if for a great review. That night a great 
tumult arose in the camp, Dionysius rushed from his 
tent, declaring that an attempt had been made upon his 
life, and fled to the acropolis, calling upon all who 
trusted him to follow him up thither. Then and there 
the soldiers, to whom he was already a hero and almost 
a demigod, voted him a life-guard of six hundred men. 
He was to choose them himself, and he took advantage 
of the privilege to select a thousand. Armed to perfec- 
tion and receiving twice the pay of other soldiers, their 
fate was now bound up with his, and he could count 
upon every man to the death. The blow was struck, 
the tyranny was restored, and Dionysius was the despot 
of Syracuse. 

In Syracuse he established himself in the arsenal, 
which became at once his palace and his stronghold; 
he strengthened his position by marrying the daughter 
of the ill-fated Hermocrates, giving his own sister in 
marriage to the latter’s brother-in-law. He caused the 
people to execute the two men who had principally 
opposed his advancement, and he issued orders for 


The Greeks 167 


gathering together into one army, besides the Syra- 
cusans, every soldier of fortune in Sicily who would 
serve for pay. 

What he had foreseen was not long in coming. 
Himilcon had spent the winter with his army in 
Akragas; when the spring came, and he no longer 
needed shelter, he ordered the city to be destroyed and 
marched upon Gela. The inhabitants determined to 
send their wives and children to Syracuse, but the 
devoted women clung to the statues of the gods and to 
the altars in the market-place, crying out that they 
would share the fate of their men. As usual Himilcon 
moved up his battering rams and towers to the walls; 
but though he broke down great breaches in the forti- 
fications, the besieged men fought with fury by day, 
and by night even the women and children helped to 
build up the broken ramparts. In spite of Himilcon’s 
ceaseless exertions the city was held against him until 
Dionysius came up with fifty thousand men. He formed 
a plan to surround the enemy and the whole city and to 
make three simultaneous attacks. The well-conceived 
scheme failed in execution; Dionysius lost many men, 
and was at once accused of betrayal, since he had done 
no better than his predecessors. Yet he kept his com- 
mand, being most likely preserved from instant death 
by his life-guard, and by a clever stratagem he so far 
retrieved himself as to effect the safe evacuation 


of the city with the women and children, and the sick 


168 The Rulers of the South 


and wounded. Two thousand light-armed troops, men 
of heroic courage, remained behind in the city, and 
completely deceived the Carthaginians by making bon- 
fires and simulating a tumult in the streets. In the end 
they also escaped unhurt. 

Little by little the Greeks were being driven from 
city to city towards Syracuse, where the final struggle 
was to take place. The enemy came upon them as 
the Huns fell upon Europe many centuries later. 
The Carthaginians spared neither man nor beast, nor 
woman nor child, and prisoners were horribly tortured, 
torn to pieces, and crucified by hundreds. Before such 
an enemy the people fled to their last refuge like 
sheep to the fold when the wolves are upon them. 
That Dionysius should have been able to direct the 
storm of such a panic and regain all his power 
and influence proves his genius; that he afterwards 
attacked Carthage with success demonstrates his mas- 
terly military talent; but that he utterly vanquished 
and blotted out his foes in the end is little short of 
miraculous. 

The spectacle of a whole population hurrying in 
desperate confusion to their last shelter, women and 
children and old and sick dying of exhaustion by the 
way amid the tears and lamentations of the survivors, 
roused the Syracusan soldiers to exasperation against 
the leader to whom alone they attributed such dis- 
aster; the well-born youths who composed the cavalry 


The Greeks 169 


watched for an opportunity to slay him, but finding 
him too well protected by his mercenaries, they rode 
on before and reached Syracuse in time to stir up a 
revolution against him; they seized his house and 
treasure, and in their blind rage so frightfully mal- 
treated his wife that she died of her injuries. But 
they had to deal with a man of genius and action 
who knew no fear. Dionysius had no sooner learned 
of their desertion than he hastened to follow them 
with a chosen band of seven hundred men. At mid- 
night he was before the closed gate of Achradina, 
where brave Hermocrates had been murdered; in an 
hour the doors were burned down; when the day 
dawned his enemies lay dead in the market-place, and 
as the sun rose he was once more master of the city. 

And now the Carthaginian advance was checked 
by the plague, which ever wrought havoc among the 
Phoenician mercenaries, and Himilcon made a treaty 
of peace, with an exchange of prisoners and of ships 
taken in the war, and an extension of the Phoenician 
territory. More than half the Carthaginian army 
perished in the pestilence, Himilcon withdrew to 
Carthage, and the first part of the conflict came to 
an unexpected termination. The strong man set about 
consolidating his power. 

He occupied the arsenal, and the island of Ortygia, | 
allowing none but his most faithful adherents to set 


foot upon the island; using the methods of Gelon 


170 The Rulers of the south 


and Hiero, he conferred citizenship upon his mer- 
cenaries and even upon freed slaves, and created a 
new body of devoted friends. He matured his plan 
for dominating all Sicily in order to make war upon 
Carthage, but at his first attempt at extending his 
power a mutiny broke out, his chief lieutenant was 
murdered, and he saw himself obliged to fall back 
upon his fortified home in Ortygia, while the muti- 
neers encamped upon Epipole and besieged the city, 
setting a price on the tyrant’s head. The situation 
was perilous in the extreme, and for once the iron 
man seems almost to have lost hope. Yet he held 
his stronghold grimly, and secretly communicated with 
certain Campanian soldiers of fortune, while propos- 
ing terms of capitulation for himself to the besiegers. 
In their simplicity they believed him, and many of 
their force dispersed. Twelve hundred Campanian 
soldiers swept down like a whirlwind upon the Syra- 
cusans, slew all they met, broke through their siege 
works, and joined Dionysius in the fort. The besiegers 
now disagreed among themselves and, choosing his 
time, Dionysius sallied out and defeated them in one 
of the suburbs, but checked all useless slaughter, that 
the vanquished mutineers might owe him their lives; 
and he honourably buried their dead. 

Master of Syracuse once more, he entered into close 
alliance with Sparta. Tyranny was growing popular in 


theory, if not yet in practice, and the Lacedzemonians, 


The Greeks 171 


while still in name recommending a democracy, pri- 
vately gave their whole support to Dionysius, although 
their conduct brought them into opposition with Cor- 
inth, which faithfully advocated the freedom of Syra- 
cuse. Thus strengthened, he began the conquest of 
Sicily. Henna, which is Castrogiovanni now, and Cata- 
nia and Naxos fell successively under his dominion, 
and Leontini surrendered on condition that the inhab- 
itants should receive the citizenship of Syracuse. His 
plan was to destroy the Greek commonwealths, to spare 
the Sicelian ones, and to found Italian cities, in order 
to equalize the various elements and produce a homo- 
geneous Sicilian nation; and as the Syracusans began 
to understand that he was not cruel but ambitious, and 
as much for them as for himself, their confidence in 
him rose and his influence became unbounded. Re- 
membering what Syracuse had suffered during the 
Athenian invasion, and mindful of his own experience 
during the mutiny, he determined to extend the fortifi- 
cations so as to take in Epipole. The huge ramparts 
that still crown the height are his work. Knowing 
that there was still some danger of revolution in the 
city, he exerted his whole energy to accomplish this 
quickly, and the great wall, more than three miles in 
length and made of large hewn stones, was completed 
in twenty days. It was built by sixty thousand free 
men, who received double wages for their labour; thirty- 


six thousand, in one hundred and eighty detachments 


172 The Rulers of the South 


of two hundred each, worked upon sections one hundred 
feet long, each section being under a master-mason, and 
every six sections under an architect. Four and twenty 
thousand men, with six thousand carts, quarried the 
stone and hauled it up the heights. Most of the stone 
was quarried in the Latomie, in Syracuse. Dionysius 
himself hardly left the works till all was finished. 

The main wall being built, he soon afterwards pre- 
pared to attack Carthage, and set to work upon the 
vast equipment which he knew to be necessary for such 
an undertaking, for the success of the Carthaginians 
had generally been due to their superior numbers and 
excellent munitions of war. Dionysius worked on a 
great scale; he built two hundred new ships of war 
and refitted a hundred and ten old ones; one hundred 
and forty thousand shields with an equal number of 
swords and helmets were made, and fourteen thousand 
cuirasses with their fittings. Great engines were con- 
structed for hurling stones; and it is known that in 
the year 399 he called together a general meeting of 
engineers, who planned the first ships ever built with 
five banks of oars, and the first long-range catapults, 
though what the range of the latter may really have 
been we do not know: those in use earlier could hurl a 
stone six hundred feet. 

The first five-banked ship, splendid with gold and 
silver, brought home from Locri one of two brides 


whom the despot married on the same day, —a wedding 


The Greeks 173 


unexampled, I believe, in Greek history. A few days 
later he addressed the people and exposed his plans 
with the fervid eloquence that had seldom failed him, 
stirring up the hatred that was not yet old, and firing 
every hearer with the spirit of revenge. The news of 
the unequalled preparations at Syracuse had already 
gone forth; the tidings of the master’s speech spread 
like flame through straw. 

All Sicily rose, and wheresoever, in cities that once 
had been all Greek, there were Punic masters, or mer- 
chants, or landowners, or travellers, they were put to 
death ; and wheresoever the Carthaginians had torn to 
pieces or burnt or crucified a Greek, there the Greeks 
tortured and impaled a Carthaginian. 

At last, in 397, when all the African coasts were 
exhausted by a pestilence that had raged for two whole 
years, Dionysius declared war, and his ambassadors 
gave proud warning to the high council of Carthage 
that she must set free and evacuate every Greek city in 
Sicily or fight to an issue. As soon as the ambassadors 
returned, and without giving Carthage time to collect 
the mercenary troops on which she always most de- 
pended, Dionysius struck the first blow, and attacked 
Eryx, now Monte San Giuliano above Trapani, and 
Motye, a dozen miles to southward. Eryx surren- 
dered without a blow; Motye had received a small 
reénforcement from Carthage, and made a_ brave 


defence. 


174 The Rulers of the South 


In those times the two small islands which lie north 
of Marsala, or Lilybzeum, formed a part of the main- 
land and enclosed a wide harbour; in the midst of this 
sheet of shallow water Motye was built upon the little 
island which now bears the name of San Pantaleo and 
was connected with the land by a narrow causeway on 
the northeast side. The town itself was strongly forti- 
fied and was one of the most valuable points held by 
the Carthaginians. Before the arrival of Dionysius the 
inhabitants destroyed the causeway. Dionysius deter- 
mined to rebuild it, entered the harbour, and. beached 
his war-vessels north of the little island. He left his 
admiral Leptines to see to the reconstruction of the dam 
and withdrew his land forces for a time in order to 
make a raid upon the Phoenician country. Meanwhile 
Himilcon reached Syracuse with a small fleet of ten 
vessels, hoping to draw Dionysius away from Motye; 
but failing in this intention and having done such 
damage as he could with so small a force, he sailed 
back again and appeared before Motye at daybreak, 
with one hundred of his best ships. Having easily 
destroyed the few Greek vessels that were lying out- 
side, he at once blockaded the entrance to the harbour, 
within which the whole of the Greek war fleet was drawn 
up high and dry. It seemed as if the Greeks were 
caught in a trap from which they could not escape, but 
the courage and decision of Dionysius were not at fault, 


and he turned the tables upon his adversary in a day. 


The Greeks its 


The north side of the harbour was separated from the 
open sea by a low neck of sand about four thousand 
yards wide. Across this space Dionysius actually 
hauled eighty ships of war on chocks, in a single day, 
and at the same time he moved his newly invented long- 
range catapults down to the entrance of the harbour. 
The war-ships he had now launched sailed down in a 
body and attacked the Carthaginian fleet from seaward, 
driving it in, and at the same time the astonished Car- 
thaginians, who believed themselves well out of range 
from the shore, received a terrific volley of stones from 
the catapults. Himilcon himself would have been driven 
into the harbour and caught, if he had not at once 
made good his escape; but he lost no time, left Motye 
to its fate, and breaking through the line of Syracusan 
vessels, got out to sea. 

During the siege of Motye’ which followed, the 
inhabitants made a memorable defence, opposing the 
engines of the Greeks with every conceivable device, 
and sometimes setting them on fire; and when at last a 
breach was made in the walls, and Dionysius believed 
that the city was in his hands, he still had to carry on 
the siege from street to street and from house to house 
through many days and nights. When the last defence 
was broken down, the Greeks wreaked their vengeance 
in a wholesale slaughter, in which neither women nor 
children were spared, until Dionysius himself bade 
them take refuge in their temples. The Carthaginians 


176 The Rulersvorsthes sours 


- who were taken alive were sold as slaves, but every 
Greek who was found on their side was crucified at 
once. 

Intending to follow up his victory, Dionysius at once 
moved upon Segesta, the city of all others in Sicily the 
most hateful to the Syracusans; but here, as if misfor- 
tune were attached to the mere name of the place, he 
suffered a considerable reverse almost before the siege 
had begun. Meanwhile the Carthaginians had set on 
foot for the third time a vast army of mercenaries, and 
we now hear for the first time that war chariots accom- 
panied the host. Those that had left Carthage at the 
beginning of the first invasion had been lost at sea. 

Dionysius awaited him near Panormus, but only suc- 
ceeded in destroying some fifty ships and about five 
thousand of his soldiers, the rest entering the harbour 
in safety. In afew days Himilcon had undone all that 
the Syracusans had accomplished; Eryx was won back, 
Motye was retaken, and the other Phoenician cities of 
the west found themselves free. In face of such an 
enemy Dionysius was reluctantly obliged to withdraw 
to Syracuse. Himilcon now marched eastward and 
seized Messina, whence the greater part of the popula- 
tion had already escaped. Out of two hundred who 
sprang into the sea and attempted to swim the straits 
fifty reached the Italian shore in safety. Himilcon saw 
the great difficulty of holding Messina and, lest it 
should be of use to his enemies, determined to destroy 


The Greeks iby 


the city. The allies of Dionysius now began to desert 
him, but he did not lose heart; he fortified and fpro- 
visioned the Syracusan towns and completed the fortifi- 
cations of Syracuse, while Himilcon was marching down 
upon Naxos. At Catania he attacked the Carthagin- 
ian fleet in the hope of preventing it from effecting a 
junction with the land force, but suffered an overwhelm- 
ing defeat in which he lost one hundred ships and 
twenty thousand men. Retreating upon Syracuse again, 
he prepared to make a final stand, while Himilcon 
advanced upon the city by land and encamped a little 
more than a mile north of Epipole. 

Seeing the enormous strength of the fortifications 
raised by Dionysius. before the war began, Himilcon 
determined to starve the city to a surrender, and 
built three forts which commanded the southern side 
of the harbour. Meanwhile, however, reénforcements 
of ships arrived from Sparta, and the Syracusans, 
gathering courage, fell upon a detachment of vessels 
which were bringing corn to the Carthaginians; a 
naval engagement followed in which the Carthagini- 
ans were badly beaten and lost twenty-four ships. 

The position of Dionysius was dangerous, but not 
desperate, and before long the plague, which seems 
to have accompanied the Carthaginians wherever they 
went, came to his assistance. The men died at such 
a rate that it was impossible to bury the bodies, and 
the condition of Himilcon’s camp was too hideous to 


VOL. I N 


178 The Rulers of the South 


be described. Quick to take advantage of everything 
that could weaken his enemy, Dionysius now executed 
a general movement which terminated the war. On 
a night when there was no moon the Syracusan fleet 
got under way in the harbour, and Dionysius himself 
marched a large force round Epipolz to surprise the 
Carthaginian camp and one of Himilcon’s forts. He 
sent a thousand mercenaries against the camp, and 
a body of cavalry, instructing the latter to pretend 
flight as soon as the enemy came out. These mer- 
cenaries were men whom he distrusted, and he coolly 
sacrificed them for the sake of occupying the enemy 
on that side. He himself seized the fort on the Olym- 
pieum, and sent the cavalry down to take the next, 
which was near the shore. At daybreak the Greek 
ships surprised the Carthaginian fleet, and gained a 
complete victory over the vessels which were afloat. 
Dionysius himself set fire to forty ships that were on 
the beach, and a strong wind drove the flames out 
to the transports. In an indescribable confusion the 
whole sea force of the Carthaginians was destroyed 
before their eyes, while every kind of small craft, 
manned even by old men and boys, put out from the 
city to plunder the half-burned wrecks, and thousands 
of women and little children climbed the roofs of the 
city to watch the tragedy of fire and sword. By land 
the fighting lasted all the day, and at night Dionysius 
encamped by the Olympieum. All but forty of Himil- 


The Greeks 179 


con’s ships were destroyed or crippled, and more than 
half his army of three hundred thousand men lay 
dead in the camp or on the field. He humbly treated 
for his life and safety, and at last for the sum of 
three hundred talents, which was perhaps all he had 
left to give, Dionysius suffered him to depart and to 
take with him, upon his forty ships, those of his sol- 
diers who were Carthaginian citizens. When the 
Greeks entered the Carthaginian camp at last, it is 
told that they found within it the unburied bodies of 
a hundred and fifty thousand men. Thus ended the 
great Carthaginian expedition for the conquest of 
Sicily. 

At first sight one may wonder why Dionysius did not 
completely destroy the remains of Himilcon’s host, exe- 
cute their general himself, and drive out the Phcenicians 
from the western part of the island; but a little reflec- 
tion will show how much wiser that course was which 
he actually pursued. The strength of Carthage lay, 
not in a warlike population, but in the great wealth 
by which she commanded the service of numerous 
mercenaries, and although she had now suffered an 
extraordinary defeat, which was followed by some- 
thing like a revolution, her losses were chiefly finan- 
cial, while her resources were practically inexhaustible. 
By not driving her to extremities, Dionysius both prac- 
tised wisdom and displayed magnanimity. Moreover, 


his real ambition was to be the ruler of the western 


180 The Rulers of the South 


Greeks rather than a mere conqueror of barbarous 
nations. By treachery or arms, indeed, he soon got 
the lordship of the Sicelian cities of the interior, but 
these were already so completely hellenized as to be 
practically Greek, and were so situated as to be nec- 
essary to him. His fortune, however, did not follow 
him everywhere, and in attempting to seize Taurome- 
nium he once more suffered defeat, in spite of the 
most tremendous exertions. Climbing the steep ascent 
behind the modern town, on a dark winter’s night 
when it was bitter. celd, he seized the castiewstie 
‘Castello’ of to-day, and thence tried to storm the 
city; but the Sicelians drove him back into the dark- 
ness, slaying six hundred of his men; he himself fell, 
and barely escaping with his life rolled down the hill, 
bruised and bleeding, with no arms left but the cuirass 
on his body. But his defeats were always followed by 
victories. He crossed the straits and attacked Rhegium 
on the mainland; failing to take the strong place at 
once, he laid waste the country. When he took it at 
last it was by starving the garrison to a surrender. In 
their agony of hunger the people crept out from the 
beleaguered city and devoured the grass under the 
walls, but Dionysius turned cattle and sheep upon it, 
that cropped it close while his soldiers guarded them. 
When at last he had possession of a city half full of 
dead men, he allowed the rest to buy their freedom, 
and sold the poor for slaves, but he took evil vengeance 


The Greeks 181 


upon their brave general Phyton, for he drowned his 
son, and told the unhappy father what he had done, 
then scourged him through the city, and drowned him 
also at last, with all the rest of his family. 





STRAITS OF MESSINA ABEAM OF RHEGIUM, NOW REGGIO, CALABRIA 


Thenceforward Dionysius ruled the south for twenty 
years, for Rhegium had been the last strong place that 
had held out against him. It was at this time, in the 


182 The Rulers of the South 


year 387, that the Greeks of Greece had practically 
abandoned the Greeks of Asia Minor to Persia, and 
Rome had not yet recovered from the invasion of the 
Gauls; the Greeks of Sicily alone, by the genius of a 
tyrant, held in check their strong enemies the Cartha- 
ginians, and were themselves united under Dionysius ; 
and he, on his side, maintained a sort of friendly alli- 
ance with the Gauls, and had done his best to contrib- 
ute to the humiliation of Greece. Yet, as the acute 
Holm truly says, he was the chief stay of Hellenism 
in the Mediterranean, and without him the Persian 
from the east might have met the Carthaginian from 
the west to bring about the total extinction of the 
Greek power. Little by little, by ceaseless war and 
untiring activity, he extended his dominion into Italy, 
and joined the Gauls in the destruction of the Etrus- 
can power, even plundering Czeere, not thirty miles 
from Rome. On the Adriatic coast he was supreme, 
and if Tarentum still was independent in name it was 
his tributary in fact, and was forced to receive his colo- 
nists into its lands. 

So strong a despot might well have been free from 
little vanities; yet he wrote verses for public competi- 
tion, and after proving himself a soldier of genius 
showed the whole world that he was a poet without 
talent. Fortunate in great undertakings and at the 
most critical moments of his life, he could not win a 


prize at Olympia, his horses ran away on the track, 


The Greeks 183 


x 


and the ship that brought home his representatives 
went to pieces on the Italian coast. His small under- 
takings failed, and his small talents betrayed him into 
fits of inordinate vanity, followed by disappointment 
out of all proportion with their cause. In this respect 
the man whom Publius Scipio called the bravest and 
keenest of his time was not superior to many other 
sovereigns and men of genius; for the man of genius 
looks upon his favourite minor talent as a prodigal son 
to whom all sins are forgiven, and it is perhaps only 
he whose chief gift is not beyond question, who dares 
not trust himself to play with a small accomplishment. 
Dionysius was great enough to have written even 
worse poetry than he probably produced. 

What he did for Syracuse was so great that after 
two thousand and three hundred years, the remains 
of his work belong to the greatest monuments of 
antiquity, and it is impossible to follow the wall of 
Epipole, or to wander through the enchanted gardens 
of the vast quarries, without marvelling at the man 
who deepened the one and built the other. 

As is the case with many romantic characters in 
history, who lived in distracted times and appeared 
upon the stage of the world, like the gods in the 
plays of A®schylus, to make order out of chaos by 
the mere miracle of their presence, a vast mass of 
fable and fantastic legend clings about the name of 
the elder Dionysius. He made prisons of the quar- 


i84 The Rulers of the South 


ries, in which captives were kept so long that they 
married and had children and brought up a second 
generation of prisoners; and in order that he might 
know how they spoke of him he constructed the 
astounding acoustic cavern still called the Ear of Dio- 
nysius. He visited without mercy even the passing 
thought that an attempt upon his life might be pos- 
sible; one of his favourite guards was executed for 
having dreamt that he murdered his master, on the 
singularly insufficient ground that before dreaming of 
such a deed he must have often thought of doing it. 
His own brother one day, when explaining to him the 
position of a fortress, borrowed a javelin from a guards- 
man in order to draw upon the sand with its point; the 
soldier was instantly executed for having given up his 
weapon. Again, when playing ball, he laid aside his 
upper garment with his sword, giving them into the 
care of a favourite youth. One standing by said in 
jest that the sovereign seemed willing to trust his life 
to the lad, and the latter smiled at the words. Both 
were instantly put to death. It is said that he would 
never trust himself to the services of a barber, but that 
he used to make his own daughters clip his beard, or 
singe it with burning walnuts. In meetings of the 
people he would not speak from a platform, but built 
himself a stone tribune which was nothing less than a 
small tower. The legends say that he had his bed 
surrounded by a broad channel of deep water, crossing 











The Greeks 185 


it on a plank which he drew after him; that he wore 
night and day an iron cuirass, and seldom was without 
weapons; that he employed an organized band of 
spies, both men and women, as the first Hiero had 
done; that neither his sons nor his brothers were 
allowed to approach him till his guards had changed 
every one of their garments, lest they should have 
some weapon concealed about them; and finally that 
he brought up his eldest son, who became Dionysius 
the second, in ignorance and solitude within the 
palace, allowing him no amusement nor occupation 
except carpentering. To him belongs the legend of 
the sword of Damocles, which has passed to proverbial 
use in successive ages, and the fable of Damon and 
Pythias belongs to his reign. 

Of his cruelties, so far as concerns those of which 
there is historical evidence, it seems certain that they 
were perpetrated from no blocdthirsty motive, but were 
necessary to his system of self-defence at a time when 
the murder of tyrants was so common as to seem natu- 
ral and logical. Of temperate life and untiring indus- 
try, ambition was the only passion that could hold him. 
Long afterwards, during a drinking bout, Philip of 
Macedon asked the younger Dionysius how his father 
had found time to write poetry. ‘‘He used the time,” 
answered the son, “which happier men like you and 
me spend in drinking together.’ Holm considers it a 
sign of his firm character that he lived in harmony with 


186 The Rulers of the South 


two wives at a time, dining daily with them both 
together, and indeed he seems to have lived peacefully 
with them and with his seven children. The great 
man’s only weakness seems to have been for his own 
verses, and when at last, doubtiess for political reasons, 
the prize was awarded in Athens to his tragedy, the 
‘Ransom of Hector,’ he only outlived that great and 
final satisfaction to his vanity by a few days. It is 
even told that in his delight, he, the most moderate of 
men, drank so deeply as to cause his death. Yet he 
encouraged joyous excesses among his subjects, as 
many another despot has done since, and there is evi- 
dence that while himself leading what may almost be 
called a moral life, he preferred for his amusement the 
society of rakes, gamesters, and spendthrifts. Though 
it is said that he rarely laughed, he made jests of the 
kind that seemed witty to historians, but which have 
either lost their savour by two thousand years of repeti- 
tion, or offend our sense of fitness by vulgar blasphemy 
of the gods, to whom, though false in our view, he 
owed the respect which good taste concedes to all 
objects of devotion and civilized belief. 

Under him the Sicilian power reached its height, 
and we may make the sad reflection that in the past 
history of all great nations the acme of strength and 
culture has been attained under a despot, often under 
the first who has appeared after a long period of free- 


dom. Dionysius ruled alone during thirty-eight years, 


The Greeks Loy 


one of the most extraordinary men of any age; he 
saved Hellenism from destruction in the central Medi- 


terranean and he reduced chaos to order in founding a 





"B GARDEN OF THE CHURCH OF S. NICOLA, 
GIRGENTI, FORMERLY AGRIGENTUM 


new and powerful state; but he destroyed freedom and 
the very meaning of it, root and branch. 


He was succeeded by the younger Dionysius, his 


188 The Rulers of the South 


eldest son, who began life at twenty-eight years of age 
as one of the most powerful sovereigns in the west, and 
ended it as a schoolmaster in Corinth. Few dynasties 
have been enduring, of which the founder was a con- 
queror, and Dionysius the Second exhibited all the 
faults and weaknesses which were to be expected in a 
youth who had been brought up without experience of 
the world, still less of government, whose chief occupa- 
tion had been a manual art, and whose only amusements 
-had consisted in unbridled excess. It was no wonder 
that he could not wield the power which had fallen to 
him as an inheritance, or that he should have been 
completely dominated by a man who, although himself 
not strong of purpose, was a tower of strength com- 
pared with such a weakling. 

This man was Dion, sometimes said to have been the 
father-in-law of the young prince, but who was really 
his brother-in-law ; a Platonist, a mystic, and a dreamer, 
wise in his beginnings, devoted in his pursuit of an 
ideal, honourable, as some weak and good men are, 
with sudden lapses from the right that shock us the 
more because their right was so high; a man of sad 
and thoughtful disposition, who gradually degenerated 
from a noble beginning to a miserable end. 

He conceived the plan of inducing Plato himself to 
make a second visit to Syracuse, that his influence might 
save the young Dionysius from destruction, and teach him 
to make a fact of the Ideal State, and the great philoso- 


The Greeks 189 


pher fancied that his own opportunity was come at last 
and yielded to the tyrant’s request. The aspect of the 
Syracusan court was changed, the sounds of revelry 
died away, the halls were strewn with sand that the 
master might draw geometrical figures upon them, and 
the scapegrace despot became as gentle and forgiving 
as an ideal Platonist should be. But he became as 
weak to the influence of his courtiers as he was docile 
to the new teachings of philosophy, and before long 
Dion was banished to the Peloponnesus and afterwards 
to Athens, under the thin pretence of an embassy. For 
a time Plato remained with the tyrant, against his will 
perhaps, for Dionysius made him live in the castle on 
Ortygia and had him closely watched. But a small war 
in which Syracuse became engaged soon required the 
attention of the sovereign, and the philosopher was 
suffered to depart to Greece. Yet he was induced to 
return a third time, and chiefly through his friend- 
ship for the banished Dion; but though he was re- 
ceived magnificently and pressed with splendid gifts 
which he refused to accept, he was not able to obtain 
anything for his friend, whose great possessions were 
presently confiscated, while Plato soon found himself 
treated almost like a prisoner, if not worse; for he had 
been constantly advising Dionysius to give up his life- 
guard, and the soldiers who now watched him, being of 
that body, hated him and would gladly have murdered 
him. But a ship having been sent from Greece by 


190 The Rulers of the South 


Archytas, Plato’s friend, with orders to bring the philos- 
opher home, he was allowed to sail without opposition. 
“T fear,” said the tyrant when they parted, “that you 
and your friends will speak ill of me when you get 
home.” “TI trust,’ answered Plato, smiling, “that we 
shall never be so much at a loss for a subject of con- 
versation as to speak of you at all.” 

Then Dionysius married his sister Arete, who was 
Dion’s wife, to a courtier, against her will, and-Dion’s 
gentle nature was roused at last. He raised a small 
force of mercenary soldiers, in Zacynthus, the island 
now called Zante, and led them up to make a solemn 
sacrifice in the temple of Apollo; and though the moon 
was eclipsed on that very night, to the consternation of 
his men, his soothsayer Miltas persuaded them that the 
portent foretold the overshadowing of Dionysius’ power, 
and they were satisfied. A storm drove the five small 
ships far to southward, and they made Sicily at last 
at Minoa, a Phoenician town west of Akragas. Dion 
landed by force but without bloodshed, and marching 
eastward gathered an army of twenty thousand men. 
The tyrant was known to be absent from Syracuse, and 
the letter that warned him of his enemies’ approach 
was lost by the messenger, who had a piece of meat in 
the same wallet with it, and fell asleep under a tree: a 
wolf carried off the bag with all its contents. Dion 
pressed on, and came within sight of Syracuse at dawn ; 


in the level rays of the morning sun he sacrificed to 


The Greeks 191 


Apollo for the freedom of the city and of Sicily, and 
his devoted followers crowned themselves with garlands. 
At the first news that Dion was at hand, the whole city 
rose, the tyrant’s governor, Timocrates, fled in headlong 
haste, and the citizens came forth by thousands, in 
festal garments, to bring Dion through the gates in 
triumph. Entering the city, he caused it to be pro- 
claimed that he was come to free Syracuse and all 
Sicily from the despot’s hands, and to restore the de- 
mocracy of earlier days. The wildest enthusiasm took 
possession of the people. Only a small body of loyal 
troops held Epipole and the castle of Ortygia. The 
first place Dion seized at once, and he set free all the 
prisoners who were kept there. The castle withstood 
him for a time, and the result was an irregular war, in 
the course of which Dion lost his hold upon the people, 
was removed from his generalship by them to make 
way for his secret enemy Heraclides, and was obliged 
to retire to Leontini. In his absence the people were 
badly beaten by the tyrant’s soldiers, who made a 
vigorous sally, slew many hundreds, and plundered the 
houses as if they had been in an enemy’s city. Humil1- 
ated by this defeat and even more terrified than humili- 
ated, the Syracusans sent messengers entreating Dion 
to return and save them. They found him in his house 
at sunset and appealed to him with all the eloquence of 
terror. His gentle nature, incapable of Achillean wrath, 


yielded to their entreaties, and calling his soldiers 


192 The Rulers of the South 


together- he set forth at once: to; the escucs 1 teee 
news of his approach the besieged force withdrew into 
the castle, and once more the people hesitated as to 
whether they should admit Dion or not. But before 
morning the garrison of the castle sallied out again, and 
by way of hastening a solution of the situation set fire 
to the city. Dion reached the gates in time to witness 
the spectacle, but too late to save more than half the 
city. Heraclides surrendered to his old leader uncon- 
ditionally, and many entreated Dion to give him up to 
the soldiery to be dealt with as they chose. But the 
kind-hearted man gently quoted the maxim of Plato and 
asked whether, because Heraclides had been envious 
and faithless, Dion should therefore be wrathful and 
cruel: 

A formal siege of the castle was now undertaken, 
while the friends of Dionysius were gathering forces 
elsewhere to rescue it. But Dion’s military operations 
were systematic and complete, the promised assistance 
did not reach the besieged, and they finally capitulated, 
on condition that the members of the tyrant’s family 
should be allowed to depart with such treasure as they 
could take with them. 

It will be remembered that Dion’s expedition to liber- 
ate Syracuse from the tyrant had not been undertaken 
until his wife had been forcibly married to another. 
During the whole time and up to the capitulation of 
Ortygia, both she and Dion’s son, and her mother 


The Greeks 193 


Aristomache, had been within the castle, helpless to 
render him any assistance or to communicate with him. 
As he entered the stronghold, they came forward . to 
meet him. First came Aristomache leading his son, 
while his wife Arete followed at a little distance with 
streaming eyes, for she knew not how Dion would look 
upon her after she had so long been the wife of another. 
But when he had embraced his son and Aristomache, 
the latter led forward his wife and spoke these words : 
“Your banishment has made us all miserable alike, and 
your victorious return has filled us all with joy, except- 
ing her whom it was my ill fortune to see married by 
force to another. How shall she salute younow? Are 
you only her mother’s brother, or will you be still her 
husband?” Then Dion clasped Arete in his arms very 
tenderly, and they took their son and went to his own 
house, where he intended to live thenceforward. He 
was too conscientious to make himself despot in Dio- 
nysius’ place, yet too aristocratic by nature to found a 
true democracy. He had freed Syracuse and liberated 
all Sicily, but he was unable to follow up his advantage. 
He dreamed of something between a monarchy anda 
commonwealth, and between those two forms of gov- 
ernment there could only be an aristocracy. He at- 
tempted to control the people, refused to allow them to 
demolish the castle, and prevented them from tearing 
the ashes of the elder Dionysius from the tomb; he 
kept himself aloof from the masses and chose Corinthi- 


VOL. I. 12) 


194 The Rulers of the South 


ans for his counsellors; his intention, as Plutarch says, 
was to restrain the government of the people, which, 
according to Plato, is a warehouse of governments, and 
to set up a Lacedzmonian constitution. Meanwhile, 
Heraclides, whose life he had spared, opposed him at 
every turn and accused him of every crime against 
liberty, until the gentle Platonist fell into the state of 
exasperation which is peculiar to weak characters, and, 
out of sheer weariness and annoyance, consented to the 
suggestion of his friends that Heraclides should be 
murdered. It was his own death warrant. The deed 
being done, in a sudden revulsion of feeling he decreed 
that the murdered man should have a magnificent 
funeral at the public expense, and he addressed the 
people in a speech which was at once a political ha- 
rangue, an impeachment, a panegyric of the dead 
man, and an apology for having slain him. After this 
his character and his intelligence rapidly degenerated ; 
his only son, scarcely more than a boy, committed sui- 
cide in a fit of disappointment over a trifle; the furies 
of Heraclides pursued him even in his own house, and 
the gigantic spectre of a woman swept the hall of his 
home at nightfall with a phantom broom; a settled 
melancholy that was fraught with terror possessed him, 
and he saw a conspirator and a murderer in every man ~ 
who approached him. Like the elder Dionysius, he 
employed spies throughout the city, but unlike him, he 
lacked the cynical courage to execute unhesitatingly 


The Greeks 195 


every one whom he suspected. On pretence of creat- 
ing an imaginary conspiracy for the sake of detecting 
it, and increasing Dion’s popularity by a general par- 
don of those concerned, —a trick which could hardly 
deceive a schoolboy,— his former friends conspired in 
good earnest to take his life. They came to him at 
last in his own house, all unarmed, lest they should be 
searched by his guards and their weapons taken from 
them, and they trusted to slay him with their hands; 
but when they could not, because he was very strong, 
none dared go out to fetch a sword wherewith to kill 
him, and so they held him fast for the greater part of 
an hour; but at last one of their number who had 
remained outside, came to the window and passed in 
a knife to them. And so they slew him. That was the 
miserable end of the attempt to restore liberty in Sicily. 

The leader of the murderers was one Callippus, an 
Athenian, who had long been Dion’s friend. He 
instantly seized the power, and reigned thirteen months, 
a military despot hated by all alike, till he was driven 
out on his first attempt to extend his dominions. Two 
or three years later he was slain near Rhegium, and 
with the very knife by which Dion had died, by two of 
his fellow-murderers. 

Syracuse became the sport of any adventurer who 
could gain the momentary support of the soldiery, and 
at last it was the turn of the younger Dionysius, who 
had succeeded in holding Rhegium and Locri through- 


196 The Rulers of the South 


out the confusion of those years. Returning to Syra- 
cuse, he showed himself at his worst, and ruled by a 
system of terror which has rarely been equalled and 
never surpassed. Not Syracuse only but all Sicily 
had fallen into a miserable condition; the mercenaries 
employed by the tyrants at the height of their power 
overran the country far and wide, supporting them- 
selves by plunder and revelling in every species of 
licentious excess. Anarchy reigned supreme; Car- 
thage had concluded a treaty with Rome and again 
stretched out her grasping hand in an attempt to get 
possession of the coveted island; in utmost fear the 
Syracusans turned to Corinth for help, imploring the 
assistance of a general if not of an armed force. Their 
request was granted, and Corinth sent them a man 
whose name stands almost alone in history, the patriot 
soldier Timoleon, he who saved his brother’s life in 
battle by a miracle of reckless courage, but gave him 
over to a just death when he seized the power and 
attempted to make himself the tyrant of Corinth. 
We contemplate Timoleon’s almost unattainable 
moral greatness with a sort of despair, and we realize 
that an example may be so perfect as to discourage all 
attempts at imitation. He risks his life with magnif- 
cent recklessness to save his brother from the enemies’ 
spears, and then, with antique virtue, after using every 
means of affectionate persuasion in vain, he orders the 
same brother to be executed before his eyes, that his 


The Greeks 197 


country may be saved from tyranny; yet being very 
human at heart, he withdraws from public life, and 
almost from the society of mankind, to mourn in soli- 
tude for nearly twenty years the deed which he would 
have done again. Emerging at last from his retire- 
ment in the hope of setting free an enslaved country, 
he exhibits, with the most exiguous resources, the most 
magnificent gifts of generalship, carries all before him 
in a series of brilliant actions, liberates Sicily, restores 
democratic freedom, vanquishes the Carthaginians, and 
establishes just laws. The idol of his adopted people, 
the arbiter of their destinies, and almost their predes- 
tined master, not a thought of holding the rulership 
assails him, nor is the lustre of his patriotism dimmed 
by the least breath of ambition; after teaching a nation 
to govern itself wisely, he retires to the peaceful privacy 
of an ordinary citizen’s condition, and he lives out the 
calm remainder of his days in the enjoyment of the 
liberty he has created, and under the rare protection of 
the laws he has called into existence. It is indeed 
hard to see how human nature could approach nearer 
to perfection from the beginning to the end of a 
career fraught with danger, difficulties, and perplexing 
problems. 

Timoleon’s departure from Corinth was accompanied 
by the most propitious signs and auguries. Demeter 
and Persephone appeared to their priestesses in dreams, 


clad in the garb of travellers and promising to accom- 


198 The Rulers of the South 


pany and protect the expedition. When Timoleon sac- 
rificed to Apollo in Delphi, a wreath embroidered with 
crowns and images of victory fell from its place and 
encircled his head; and when at last his ships put to 
sea, mysterious fires came down from heaven and floated 
through the darkness before them, night after night, 
until the ships made the Italian coast. Nor is the 
last occurrence perhaps altogether a fable, for in fair 
weather, and in certain conditions of the air, seafaring 
men are familiar with the lights of Saint Elmo, the elec- 
tric glow that sometimes settles on the mastheads and 
hangs at the yardarms in balls of fire for whole nights 
together, and which must naturally have seemed to the 
ancients to be nothing less than a heavenly portent. 
The story of Timoleon’s war of liberation must be 
briefly told. In Rhegium he found a Carthaginian 
fleet, of which the commanders were disposed to pre- 
vent his movement upon Syracuse; but in concert with 
the people of the city he called the Carthaginian gen- 
erals to a council within the walls, and while long argu- 
ments were made to cause delay, Timoleon’s fleet 
slipped out of the harbour and got to sea; then, when 
he received news that they were under way, he himself 
disappeared in the crowd, reached his own vessel, 
which had waited for him, and was beyond pursuit 
before the council broke up and the Carthaginians dis- 
covered that they had been tricked. Sailing down the 
east coast, he was received with open arms in Taurome- 


The Greeks 199 


nium, and he looked about for a second ally. At last 
the people of Hadranum, now Aderno, being divided 
into two parties, the one asked help of Timoleon, the 
other of Icetes or Hicetas, who held all of Syracuse 
except Ortygia and was in good understanding with the 
Carthaginians; Timoleon surprised and put to flight his 
force, and Hadranum opened its gates. 

Dionysius was meanwhile driven to last extremities 
in his castle on the little island; he was hemmed in 
on all sides, and he saw that whether Icetes or Timo- 
leon won the day, his own lordship was at an end. 
He sent messengers to Timoleon secretly, and treated 
with him for the surrender of the island, on the con- 
dition of being allowed to escape with one ship and 
all the treasure he could carry. This was granted; 
four hundred of Timoleon’s men entered the fortress 
in spite of the vigilance of Icetes, and the Dionysian 
dynasty was at an end. Timoleon held Catania and 
supplied Ortygia with provisions by means of a num- 
ber of small vessels which regularly ran the blockade. 
Icetes went out to attack Catania in order to destroy 
the base of supplies. He was not in sight of the 
latter place when news came that in his absence the 
Corinthians in Ortygia had succeeded in seizing Achra- 
dina, and had connected it with the island by hasty 
works, and he hurriedly returned to Syracuse. And 
now a long siege followed, with little fighting, and it 


came to pass that in the idle days Timoleon’s Corin- 


200 The Rulers of the South 


thian soldiers came out to catch fish in the ponds 
near the marsh, and the Greeks who were with Icetes 
came likewise, so that they made friendly acquaint- 
ance; for they had no reason for quarrelling except 
that they were mercenaries on opposite sides, and had 
to fight when they were led out to battle. They told 
each other that Icetes ought to side with Timoleon, 
and that both should drive out the Carthaginians, and 
presently it was rumoured that Icetes would do so. 
Thereupon, without striking another blow, the Car- 
thaginian general suddenly withdrew his whole army 
and fleet, and sailed away to Africa. They were 
hardly out of sight when Timoleon led up his force, 
and in a triple attack drove Icetes out of Syracuse 
altogether. He had accomplished the first part of 
his task, and he set to work to reorganize the liberated 
people. 

He now showed his vast intellectual and moral supe- 
riority over Dion. The latter’s first move was to estab- 
lish himself in the castle on Ortygia, as if expecting 
to be attacked by the people he had freed; Timoleon 
called upon the inhabitants to raze the tyrant’s fortress 
to the ground, and to build the people’s tribunal upon 
the spot, and he began to make them frame laws which 
should be administered there, while he himself lived 
simply, openly, and unattended. 

Sicily had been reduced to a desperate condition by 
civil war, and Syracuse, like many other Sicilian cities. 


The Greeks 201 


was half depopulated. The grass grew high in the 
market-places, the deer and wild boar from the forests 
grazed under the very walls of the towns, and some- 
times made their way into the deserted streets. The 
few rich survivors had retired to strong castles of their 
own in the mountain fastnesses, as men did in the deso- 
lation of the dark ages, and the poor had been enslaved 
or exterminated. The need of a new population was 
evident, and Timoleon called upon Corinth for colo- 
nists. The mother city sent ten thousand; the rest of 
Sicily together with Southern Italy sent fifty thousand ; 
the new colonists consented to pay for the land and 
houses they occupied, and the old inhabitants actually 
paid for what was already theirs, in order that a public 
fund might be created. To increase the resources of 
the state, Timoleon took several cities from the Phceni- 
cians, the most important of which was Entella, and 
sold them to Greek colonists, a proceeding which is jus- 
tified when one considers the extent of the injuries done 
to the Greeks by the Carthaginians, but which doubt- 
less contributed to bring on a new struggle with Car- 
thage. The shameful retreat of the latter’s general 
from Syracuse, almost without having struck a blow, 
led to his speedy disgrace, and though he died by his 
own hand, even suicide could not save him from 
infamy, and his dead body was nailed to the cross. 
Carthage now prepared for another great expedition, 
Hasdrubal and Hamilcar were chosen as generals, the 


202 The Rulers of the South 


usual vast army of mercenaries landed at Lilybeum, 
and another reign of terror began in Sicily. Timo- 
leon’s force was insignificant, and his war material was 
scanty; as he was marching to Akragas, a mutiny 
broke out in his little army, and a thousand of his mer- 
cenary Greeks deserted him and returned to Syracuse. 
The Carthaginians marched upon Entella, which Timo- 
leon had taken from their people; he had determined to 
intercept the enemy, when he was checked by meeting 
with a number of mules laden with parsley; for parsley 
was used for funeral crowns, and the omen was there- 
fore evil. But Timoleon took some of the leaves, and 
made a chaplet, and crowned himself, saying that pars- 
ley was used also for the victors in the Isthmian Games, 
and encouraged his men, saying that crowns were given 
them even before victory. So they took courage and 
marched on, and a heavy mist hid the enemy from 
them, while they heard the inarticulate hum of the 
camp at no great distance; and when the mist began to 
lift the Carthaginians were already crossing the river, 
with their chariots and a thousand men who carried 
white shields. So Timoleon sent down his cavalry, but 
the chariots drove furiously up and down in front of the 
enemy’s ranks and the horses would not charge them. 
Then Timoleon cried aloud to his foot-soldiers to fol- 
low him, and his voice was clearer and louder than the 
voice of a man, so that it was as if a god spoke to 
them; he took his sword and shield in his hands, and 


The Greeks 203 


the trumpets screamed, and he rushed forward, and a 
great tempest with thunder and much rain had gath- 
ered behind him on the hill and came down with him 
and beat into the faces of his enemies, and the thunder 
roared, and the hail rattled on their iron breast-plates 
and brass helmets with a deafening noise, so that they 
could not hear the orders their officers gave; and the 
Greeks put them to sudden rout and wild confusion, 
and ten thousand of them were slain or drowned in the 
river, for they were weighed down by their heavy 
armour. This is the first time that as many as three 
thousand natives of Carthage were slain in a battle. 
After that the Greeks took the camp and all it held, 
with many prisoners; and so that expedition ended. 
Now the Carthaginians, seeing that the Greeks were 
the bravest and most invincible of men, hired Greek 
soldiers to fight for them, and a new expedition was 
sent out with seventy ships, and sailed to Messina, 
where a dim war was fought of which not much is 
known; but three tyrants, Icetes of Leontini, Mamer- 
cus of Catania, and Hippo of Messina, were allied with 
the Carthaginians against Timoleon, and he beat them 
one by one; yet when peace was made he was obliged 
to leave Carthage the lordship of the western cities. 
Of the three despots, Hippo fell into the hands of his 
own people, and they scourged him and put him to 
death in the theatre of Messina, gathering thither all 
the children of the city to see the tyrant’s end, that 


204 The Rulers of the South 


they might always remember it. Icetes was executed 
by the Corinthians as a traitor to the Greeks, and 
because he had drowned the wife and the sister of the 
son of Dion, the Syracusans also slew his wife and 
daughters after a mock trial. As for Mamercus, when 
Timoleon had beaten him in battle, he surrendered ; 
but Timoleon gave him up to the Syracusans to judge 
him, which they did in the theatre. When they would 
not hear his defence, he, being unarmed, broke from 
his keepers, and running at great speed across the 
open orchestra, he threw himself forward upon his 
head, against the wall, hoping to die; but he lived to 
perish on the cross, like acommon robber. And with 
his death the most strenuous part of Timoleon’s task 
was accomplished. He had freed all Sicily from the 
tyrants, and he had reduced the power of Carthage. 
He repopulated the deserted cities of Sicily and taught 
them how to enrich and strengthen themselves, and 
unlike Dionysius the elder he did not aim at the 
agerandizement of Syracuse to the detriment of all 
the rest: it was under his guidance that Akragas, 
which had never recovered from the Carthaginian 
conquest, became once more a strong and indepen- 
dent city. 

He spent his old age, afflicted with total blindness, 
in encouraging the work he had begun; on important 
occasions, when his counsels could not be spared, he 
was carried to the theatre where the people went to 


The Greeks 205 


deliberate, and every appearance was a triumph, fol- 
lowed by his immediate return to the privacy of the 
house given him by the city, in which he dwelt with 
his wife and his children, and in which at last he 
died, one of the most splendid types of human hon- 
our, courage, and wisdom that ever freed a nation 
from slavery. 

Chosen youths bore his body over the ground where 
the tyrant’s castle had stood, and the whole population 
of Syracuse followed it to the market-place, where the 
funeral pile was erected. His ashes were buried on 
the spot, and about his tomb a great gymnasium was 
built. Games were then and there instituted in his 
memory, and the proclamation which decreed them 
called him ‘the destroyer of tyrants, the subduer of 
barbarians, the man who had peopled again great cities 
that lay desolate, and who had restored to all Sicilians 
their laws and ancient rights.’ 

The immediate result of Timoleon’s labours was not 
lasting, but it was long before the spirit he had in- 
stilled into the life of Syracuse altogether disappeared, 
and even under the worst tyranny of Agathocles some 
of the forms of freedom were preserved. During 
some twenty years after Timoleon’s death, the city 
remained free, and as is often the case in prosperous 
times the records of that period are few and con- 
fused. Agriculture prospered, commerce throve, archi- 
tects built, sculptors modelled, and poets made verses ; 


206 The Rulers of the South 


but history is silent and only resumes her labour to 
tell of new disasters. The story of the extraordinary 
man to whom the tyranny of Syracuse next fell is so 
fantastic that it deserves telling for its own sake, as 





A SICILIAN COURTYARD 


well as for some resemblance that it bears to the fable 
of CEdipus. 

In Rhegium, in fhe days of Timoleon, there lived 
a Greek called Carcinus, of noble birth and great 


The Greeks 207 


possessions, and he was exiled by his fellow-citizens, 
and went and dwelt in Sicily, in the city of Therma, 
which is now Termini, on the north side of the island. 
He married a woman of that city, and when a 
son was about to be born to him, he was visited by 
evil dreams. At that time certain Carthaginians were 
going to the oracle of Delphi, and he besought them 
to ask for him the interpretations of his visions. 
They brought him word that his son should be the 
cause of great misfortunes to the Carthaginians and 
to all Sicily; therefore, when the child was born, he 
caused it to be exposed in a desert place, and set a 
watch lest any one should come and save it or by 
any means keep it alive. Yet the child did not die, 
and the mother watched her opportunity until the 
guard grew careless, and she took up her child and 
fled with it to the house of her brother and named 
it Agathocles, after her own father. The child 
grew up and was very beautiful, and stronger than 
other children, and when he was seven years old, his 
father, not knowing him, praised his beauty and his 
strength, and his mother answered, feigning sadness, 
“So would our boy have been, if you had let him 
live.” Then Carcinus repented suddenly of what he 
had done and turned away weeping bitterly; but his 
wife comforted him and told him the truth, and he 
‘acknowledged his son and brought him home. By 
and by Carcinus left Thermze with all his family and 


208 The Rulers of the South 


went and lived in Syracuse, where he died soon after- 
wards, and Agathocles grew up with his mother. 
She, believing in great things for him, caused a little 
statue of him to be made and set it up as an offer- 
ing before one of the temples, and at once a swarm 
of bees settled upon it and built their hive; and 
the soothsayers interpreted the sign to mean that the 
boy should win high fame. 

He grew up of great stature and marvellous strength, 
and a rich man of Syracuse, named Damas, took him 
under his protection and caused him to be appointed 
one of the leaders of a thousand in the army. Damas 
died childless, and Agathocles immediately married the 
rich man’s widow, and became thenceforward one of 
the most important persons in Syracuse. He kept 
his military position in spite of his wealth and showed 
extraordinary military talent; but when he did not 
receive the advancement he expected, after a brilliant 
engagement in Italy, and when no attention was paid 
to his claims, he left the city and seems to have lived 
for some time as a sort of free lance, while cherish- 
ing the most adventurous designs. He even besieged 
Crotona on his own account, and failing to take it, 
sought employment as a general of Tarentine mer- 
cenaries. Meanwhile, the party that had opposed him 
in Syracuse fell from power, and he returned to his 
home, to find himself before long in his old command 
of a thousand men, opposed to the Carthaginians, with 


The Greeks 209 


whom the fallen party had allied itself. In spite of 
his courage and brilliant actions the Syracusans would 
not confer upon him the generalship, since it was 
clear ta them from the first that he aimed at making 
himself despot. Turning upon him as suddenly as 
they had turned upon the opposite party, they bade 
him quit the city at once, and sent out men to kill him 
as he should ride by; but he, being warned, dressed 
a slave in his own armour and clad himself in rags. 
He escaped, and the slave was murdered in his stead. 

Being now banished, he immediately came to an 
understanding with his country’s enemies, the Car- 
thaginians, and by their influence upon the oligarchy 
of six hundred which now ruled Syracuse he obtained 
his recall, and took solemn oath before the people to 
do nothing contrary to their freedom or their rights. 
He had now reached the stage at which aspirants to 
despotism appear as the friends of the oppressed popu- 
lace, and he did not hesitate to use his power for the 
destruction of the oligarchy. On pretence of reducing 
a small revolution in the interior, he was allowed to 
get together a chosen force, and on the day appointed 
for his departure he gathered his soldiers in the 
buildings about the tomb of Timoleon in the market- 
place. In an address of stirring eloquence he accused 
the six hundred of setting him aside from public 
offices on account of his attachment to the people; 
and as his impeachment turned to a fiery arraignment 


VOL. I 13 


210 The Rulers of the South 


and at last to a tremendous invective, the soldiers cried 
out for the blood of the accused. Then, as if only 
yielding to pressure, he ordered that the trumpets 
should give the signal to fall upon the six hundred 
and upon all who should help or harbour them. The 
gates were shut against any who should escape death, 
and the infuriated soldiers stormed every house which 
might give shelter to their prey. The streetsmran 
blood. Four thousand of the richest citizens were put 
to the sword, and many perished in attempting to 
leap from the walls in flight. Some were brought 
bound before Agathocles to be executed or banished 
at his will. About six thousand escaped to Akragas. 

On the following day Agathocles called a general 
meeting of the people, and, acting out the favourite 
comedy of the despot, he declared that he had freed the 
city from the tyranny of the oligarchy, that he was 
worn out by the struggle for a righteous cause, and that 
he refused to keep even the semblance of a power to 
which he had never aspired. Thereupon, he laid down 
his military cloak and turned away, well knowing what 
was to follow. The thousands who were before him 
were the men who yesterday had plundered the houses 
of the nobles at his word; they would not lose a leader 
who might bid them plunder again; they unanimously 
declared him their general and dictator, and he made 
a pretence of refusing the dignity only that he might be 
the more certain of holding it for his life. 


The Greeks 211 


From the first he showed that he had profited by the 
example of Dion the unsuccessful, and of the half-dei- 
fied Timoleon. Strong, brave, and no longer young, he 
scorned to surround himself with a body-guard, and 
took that surer means of safety which lay in binding 
the populace to him by the joint bonds of gratification 
and greed; for he gave them what was not his, and 
promised to give them whatsoever was not theirs already. 
What the nature of his patriotism was, is clear from 
the fact that he did not hesitate to ally himself with the 
Carthaginians, the hereditary enemies of his country. 

Tyranny is as often remembered by the people for 
the immediate advantages it brings them, as for the 
evils it sooner or later inflicts. The order which Agath- 
ocles introduced by force was more advantageous to 
Sicily than the chaos that had followed when the quar- 
relsome nature of the Greek people had rendered futile 
the noble institutions of Timoleon; and though it is 
true that under Agathocles Sicily produced no famous 
artist or poet, there can be no doubt but that her wealth 
and power increased suddenly and prodigiously. It 
would be impossible to explain otherwise how the tyrant 
could have so far got the advantage of Carthage, after 
the old quarrel was renewed, as to carry war into Africa, 
winning many battles and failing only at the last when 
he had been on the point of decisive victory. 

Friendly relations were broken by the discontent of 
the Carthaginians when their general interfered to 


212 The Rulers of the Sante 


make peace between Agathocles and the Greek cities, 
and so arranged matters as to give Syracuse the lord- 
ship of the island, with the exception of the old Phe- 
nician towns; for the tyrant’s treaty had really been 
rather a personal agreement with Hamilcar than a 
national affair, and Carthage did not hesitate to set it 
aside. Then began the usual gathering of mercenaries, 
and the preparations for a great invasion, while Agath- 
ocles, on his side, collected a great force of mercenaries, 
though not without difficulty; for whereas Dionysius 
the elder had always succeeded in making Sicily feel 
that he was her true representative and natural leader 
against foreign influence, Agathocles was distrusted by 
many and opposed by not a few, and his frightful cru- 
elties may fairly be ascribed to the exceptional danger 
of his situation. He was not even a native of the city 
he ruled. He held his position, not by employing spies 
and paying life-guards whom he could implicitly trust 
to destroy the few who dared to plot against his life, 
but by the wholesale massacre of every party that was 
organized to oppose him; and when he had thus cleared 
the situation by bloodshed, he went about with careless 
courage and without ever showing the slightest suspi- 
cion of individuals. 

Carthage was not ready for war until he had com- 
pletely established his supremacy in Sicily, and when 
at last her fleet put to sea, a violent storm destroyed 
many ships with the troops they carried. Another 


The Greeks 212 


Hamilcar—the name was frequent — commanded the 
force, and in spite of all losses succeeded in encamping 
with an army of forty-five thousand men on Mount 
Ecnomus, the huge headland that juts out to the 
eastward of Girgenti; and Agathocles encamped over 
against him, still further east and beyond the salt river. 
Both armies waited and watched, sending down forag- 
ing parties to drive up cattle from the valley. Then 
Agathocles, having observed how the enemy conducted 
those small expeditions, laid an ambush for them, fell 
upon them unawares, drove back the few survivors to 
the camp, and taking advantage of the momentary 
confusion, led a general attack. Before the Carthagin- 
ians could give battle the Greeks were upon them, 
filling the ditches that protected their camp and tearing 
down the stockades. The battle would have been won 
but for the Balearic slingers, whose slings hurled stones 
weighing an English pound, and who at last drove the 
Greeks out; and then defeat followed upon repulse, as 
an unexpected reénforcement landed from Africa, and 
defeat became disaster in a general rout, in which no 
less than seven thousand of the Greeks were slaughtered. 
Yet strange to say the survivors remained faithful to 
their leader, who burned his camp and fell back first 
upon Gela, now Terranova, and at last upon Syracuse, 
while Hamilcar made a triumphal progress through the 
island, the cities opening their gates to him as to a 
liberator. Agathocles seemed lost. He saved himself 


214 The Rulers of the South 


by a stroke of astonishing boldness. 


He determined 


to leave a small garrison in Syracuse and to invade 


Carthage without delay, while all her forces were 





STREET IN SYRACUSE TO-DAY 


with sixty men-of-war. 


abroad. It was the con- 
ception of a man of genius, 
and though he did not ac- 
complish the conquest of 
Carthage, which was re- 
cerved for the vast power 
of Rome, he succeeded 
in freeing Sicily and in re- 
establishing his despotic 
Hamilcar had 


pursued him to Syracuse, 


position. 


had besieged the city, 
and was actually blockad- 
ing the harbour with his 
fleet, when Agathocles set 
forth on his expedition. 
He waited until the Car- 
thaginian ships put out to 
capture a convoy of ves- 
sels with provisions for 
the city, and sailed out 


The Carthaginians saw him, 


supposed he meant to give battle, and drew up to await 


his attack, and by the time they understood that he was 


heading to southward he had gained enough distance to 


The Greeks 215 


greatly reduce the chances of being overtaken. Never- 
theless, the Carthaginian fleet gave chase, while the 
corn ships quietly entered the harbour, and Syracuse 
was provisioned for a long siege. The whole affair 
was one of those brilliant manoeuvres that prove the 
born general. 

The Greeks believed that they were beyond pursuit, 
heading for the African coast, when, on the morning 
of the seventh day, the Carthaginian ships hove in 
sight, still in full chase, and gaining visibly. A race 
for life and death began, in the dead calm, and the 
oars pulled desperately, hour after hour. If the Greeks 
could reach the land and intrench themselves, they 
would have the advantage, for their enemies would have 
to attack them from the water’s edge; but if they were 
overtaken on the high sea, they could expect nothing 
but destruction in a battle with a force so far superior 
to their own ; and Syracuse would be lost also. Still the 
Carthaginians crept up astern, hour after hour, while 
Agathocles counted the miles that lay between him 
and the land, and knew that his fate hung by a hair. 
His men knew it too, and they reached the shore in 
time, southwest of what is now Cape Bon, in a strong 
place at the entrance to an ancient stone quarry of 
vast extent, and they threw up fortifications and 
beached their vessels. But the leader knew that the 
ships were a weakness and a temptation to flight, where 


men were to win or die, and with a heroism that has 


216 The Rulers of the South 


seldom been equalled, and commanding an obedience 
that has never been surpassed, he burned the fleet as 
it lay on the shore, firing his own vessel with his 
own hand, while every captain followed his example. 

During the fire, the Carthaginians, at some distance 
from the shore, were filled with joy; but their mood 
changed when they saw that Agathocles was leading 
his army to the interior, without waiting to give battle. 
It was too late to overtake him now; he was entering 
the richest part of their country with a large army of 
the bravest men in the world, and men whose only 
hope lay in victory; the Carthaginians fell to weeping 
and mourning and draped the bows of their ships with 
black. 

Agathocles marched on without hindrance, seized the 
rich city of Megalopolis, plundered it, and took Tunes 
next, only ten miles from Carthage. The great city, 
even in such sudden and utter need, when her main 
force was either in Sicily or at sea, was able to send out 
forty-one thousand men and two thousand chariots to 
meet the invaders. Agathocles had less than fifteen 
thousand soldiers, all told; he helped himself by 
strange stratagems that savour of Homeric times, 
spreading out the shield-covers of his heavy-armed 
infantry on staves, to represent a reserve of soldiers 
that did not exist, and loosing a number of owls among 
his men, who suddenly took great courage as the birds 
sacred to Pallas settled blinking upon their helmets and 


The Greeks 207 


shields. One thinks of the young Louis Napoleon and 
the trained eagle that was allowed to fly at his first 
landing —a trick which Ulysses might have invented 
and Homer described. 

The Greeks fought like madmen, the drivers of the 
enemy’s chariots were shot down and the cavalry pelted 
to death, the famous heavy-armed infantry charged, the 
chief general of the Carthaginians was slain, and their 
ranks wavered, —the next in command turned traitor, 
it is said, and commanded a hasty retreat, which pres- 
ently became a rout and massacre, and Agathocles was 
master of the field. In the Carthaginian camp he 
found twenty thousand pairs of manacles, brought out 
to shackle the Greeks who were to have been taken 
prisoners. 

With the small force at his disposal he could not 
hope to take the strong city, fortified as it was at every 
point and more than amply provisioned. But it was 
the policy of Carthage to allow no other town to pro- 
tect itself by fortifications, lest any should turn against 
her, and Agathocles seized one place after another, 
with vast booty. Meanwhile the Carthaginians sent to 
Hamilcar in Sicily for help, and made horrible burnt 
sacrifices of many little children to their cruel gods. 

Hamilcar received the news of the Carthaginian 
defeat before Syracuse and, at the same time, the 
bronze beaks of the ships burned by Agathocles were 
brought to him. Hoping to prevent the beleaguered 


218 The Rulers of the South 


Syracusans from learning the truth, he showed them the 
beaks as if they were trophies, and proclaimed to them 
the defeat and destruction of Agathocles, calling upon 
them to surrender at once; but they held firm, and 
before long they were informed of the truth in an unex- 
pected manner. For Agathocles had sent a vessel with 
the news of his victory; it appeared off Syracuse in the 
morning, and after an exciting race, in which it escaped 
the enemy’s blockade, it entered the harbour with fly- 
ing streamers, the whole ship’s company drawn up on 
deck, and intoning a victorious chaunt. Hamilcar tried 
to take advantage of the excitement that reigned in 
the city in order to storm a weak point, but he was 
repulsed, and soon afterwards despatched five thousand 
men to the help of Carthage. Agathocles performed 
marvels of quick marching, as he darted from one point 
to another, subduing the cities in succession, but unable 
to hold them for any length of time, for lack of men. 
He created a sort of floating domination of fear that 
centred round him in a movable kingdom wherever he 
appeared, but which could not under any circumstances 
become a permanent conquest; he plotted and con- 
spired with native princes and Carthaginian traitors to 
obtain some influence more lasting than that of the 
sword, and more than once it seemed as if he might 
succeed. For instance, there was a certain Ophellas, 
who had been a general with Alexander the Great and 
had made himself prince of Cyrene on the African 


The Greeks 219 


coast; Agathocles induced him by great promises to 
join in the conquest of Carthage, and the old soldier, 
after overcoming the difficulties of a three months’ 
march through a desert country, reached Tunes with 
over ten thousand fighting men and as many camp-fol- 
lowers, besides women and children. Agathocles did 
not hesitate to do one of the most atrociously treach- 
erous deeds in history; he wanted the troops without 
their leader, whose influence might rival his own; he 
spent a few days in friendly intercourse with him in his 
camp, and then returning to his own soldiers, accused 
Ophellas to them of attempting his life. Wrought up 
to fury by his words, they rushed upon the camp of his 
new ally, a great number of whose men were absent 
to collect provisions, and after a short and desperate 
struggle, Ophellas was slain. Agathocles then took 
the army into his own pay and shipped the camp- 
followers with all the women and children to Syracuse. 
A storm dispersed the miserable convoy, most of the 
ships sank, one or two were driven as far north as 
Ischia in the bay of Naples, and but a very few 
reached Syracuse alive. 

Meanwhile, the conspiracy of the Carthaginian trai- 
tors broke out in open revolution in the capital, under 
the leadership of Bomilcar; but they had miscalcu- 
lated their strength, the movement was crushed, and he 
himself was executed. This was in reality the end of 
Agathocles’ hopes in Africa; had the revolution suc- 


220 The Rulers of the South 


ceeded, he would without doubt have destroyed Bomil- 
car as cynically as he had murdered Ophellas, and 
Carthage might have been his; but, as it turned out, 
the Carthaginians learned their own strength by the 
failure of the attempt, and from that time forward the 
power of the Greeks diminished. Not realizing the sit- 
uation, Agathocles left his son in command and crossed 
over to Sicily with a small force; for while the Cartha- 
ginians had all this time maintained the blockade of 
Syracuse, Akragas, once more an independent and pow- 
erful city, was making an effort to dominate Sicily, and 
to that end had taken into its friendship all those whom 
Agathocles had exiled. In a short time, however, 
Agathocles put a stop to these schemes, and, having 
effectually checked the Akragantines, had only to 
contend with the exiled Syracusan aristocracy under 
Dinocrates. Meanwhile, and in his absence, his son 
suffered a succession of defeats in Africa, and found 
himself driven down to Tunes, and so hemmed in that 
he sent an urgent appeal to his father to return and 
help him. It was some time before Agathocles was able 
to leave Sicily, and when he reached Africa, he found 
himself with a small force opposed to one of those enor- 
mous armies which the Carthaginians again and again 
collected in the course of their wars. They, on their 
side, did not desire battle unless Agathocles attacked 
them, and when he did so, they had no difficulty in 
driving him back to his position with fearful loss, and 


The Greeks 221 


the end of the war was hastened by a hideous fire which 
broke out in the Carthaginian camp on the following 
night. As usual after a victory, the handsomest of the 
captives were burnt alive as a sacrifice to the gods; a 
sudden squall drove the flames from the altar upon the 
sacred tent, which caught fire and set the neighbouring 
tents of the generals in a blaze. In an instant the 
whole Carthaginian camp, consisting chiefly of huts of 
reeds and of straw, became a sea of fire, and the entire 
army fled in the direction of Carthage, in the wildest 
confusion. A large body of Libyans deserted from the 
Greek army, believing that the flames proceeded from 
bonfires lighted to celebrate the Carthaginian victory. 
When they attempted to join the Carthaginians, how- 
ever, they were taken for a hostile force, in the confu- 
sion, and thousands of them were slain. The rest 
returned to the Greeks, and, being again taken for 
enemies, were most of them slaughtered. Had Agath- 
ocles known the condition of the Carthaginians on that 
night, he might have struck a decisive blow; but the 
truth was only known in the morning, when the remain- 
der of the Libyans deserted in a body. 

The situation was now desperate, and Agathocles 
attempted to escape to Sicily, intending to leave the 
rest of his army to its fate. His son, who was to 
have been left also, discovered his father’s treachery, 
and disclosed it to the soldiers, who seized Agathocles 
and loaded him with chains. It was not until a false 


222 The Rulers of the South 


alarin of the enemy’s approach was raised in the camp 
that the tyrant was released from his bonds, in order that 
he might lead the Greeks in a final attempt to save 
themselves. But Agathocles had more regard for his 
own safety. He was brave to recklessness, but not 
devoted; when a cause was lost,: he abandoned it. 
With a few faithful followers, he got on board a small 
ship and slipped away in the night. The next day the 
soldiers murdered both his sons, and treated with the 
Carthaginians for peace, which was granted. Those of 
the Greeks who refused the terms were either crucified 
or were forced to work in chains upon the lands they had 
laid waste but a few months earlier. It is said that the 
sons of Agathocles were slain on the anniversary of 
that day on which their father had murdered Ophellas. 

But the career of the great adventurer was not yet 
over, nor was his influence in Sicily by any means 
gone. Landing in Selinus, he gathered a small force, 
which he led at once, with the unerring instinct of the 
born tyrant, against Segesta, the ancient rival and 
enemy of the Selinuntines. After laying a heavy trib- 
ute upon the city, he suddenly accused the citizens of 
attempting to murder him, and turned his soldiers 
upon them with orders to spare no living thing. He 
caused the rich men to be tortured before him, till 
they revealed the hiding-place of their treasures, and 
then had them put to death. Only the most beautiful 
boys and girls were spared to be sold as slaves in 











7, ha . 





The Greeks 223 


Italy. The city was levelled to the ground, and the 
very name of the place was changed when he gave 
the site to be inhabited by those of his adherents who 
would take it. That was the end of Segesta, and of 
the great city that in its day had brought so much 
evil upon Sicily; nothing survived the destroying wrath 
of Agathocles but the little lonely theatre high on the 
overhanging hill, and the great temple that. still stands 
in its dark beauty upon the deserted mountain side. 

But this was not all. The army of Africa which 
he had abandoned in its last need had murdered his 
two sons, and they also must be avenged. He sent 
word to his brother Antandros to take vengeance 
upon all the relatives of the soldiers he had left be- 
hind him in Africa, and Antandros executed the order 
to the letter. Thousands of old men, women, and chil- 
dren were driven down to the seashore and slaughtered 
on the beach like sheep. The sea was red with their 
blood and none dared to bury their bodies. 

Gathering strength, as it were, from each new deed 
of terror, and imposing himself upon the Sicilians by 
fear rather than by strength, he turned against the 
party of the exiles, whose army counted nearly thirty 
thousand men, and with a force of scarcely six thou- 
sand defeated them totally in a single battle. It is 
needless to say that he massacred in cold blood several 
thousands of the prisoners he took, but it is a strange 
fact that he spared Dinocrates himself, treated him 


224 The Rulers of the South 


with the greatest kindness, and employed him as a 
general of his troops during the rest of his life. 
From that time forward the power of the hoary 
tyrant was unchecked, and he extended his dominions 
far up the mainland and through the islands, laying 
Lipari under tribute and seizing Corcyra, which is 
Corfu, after completely vanquishing a Macedonian 
fleet; and when the people of that island complained 
that he laid waste their land, he laughed and said it 
was the vengeance of the Sicilians because Ulysses, 
an island man, had blinded the Sicilian shepherd Poly- 
phemus long ago; and again, on his return from that 
expedition, he massacred two thousand of his soldiers 
who dared to demand their pay that was overdue. 
He plundered Crotona, too, by a piece of outrageous 
treachery, and the gradual decay of the great southern 
city began from that day, and continued through the 
wars that followed; and he who stands by the solitary 
column which is all that remains of Hera’s temple, 
may remember that Agathocles must have sacrificed 
there in gratitude to the gods for the abomination 
they had permitted him to work in the beautiful city. 
He made himself also a friend of Ptolemy Soter and 
married that king’s daughter by Berenice; and he 
gave his own daughter to Pyrrhus the Epirote con- 
queror; he also allied himself with Demetrius, king 
of Macedonia, who was called Besieger of Cities, and 
he perhaps dreamt of conquests in the east. But most ~ 


The Greeks 225 


of all he desired to humble the Carthaginians and to 
be revenged upon them for the defeats he had suf- 
fered at their hands, and he was seventy-two years of 
age when he began to fit out a great expedition 
against them. 

But his destiny overtook him before his ships were 
ready to sail out from Syracuse. He had a favourite 
slave, named Mainon, whom he had brought from 
Segesta and trusted, whose eyes had looked upon the 
slaughter of his people and had seen his home levelled 
to the earth; and though this slave smiled, and did his 
service, and was promoted to high office, he would not 
forgive, and he waited for his opportunity more than 
sixteen years. Then he took a tooth-pick which the 
tyrant used, and he rubbed upon it a very subtle poison, 
which bred a dreadful corruption, with unspeakable 
pain, first in the mouth and by and by through the 
whole body. So when Agathocles had lost even his 
power of speech, Mainon and those who hated him took 
him and laid him still alive upon his pyre; and so he 
perished, in the year 289 B.c., as strange a compound of 
genius, cruelty, reckless courage, and shameful faith- 
lessness as ever ruled by alternate terror and popu- 
larity. 

It is said that during the awful and protracted suffer- 
ings caused by the poison, he formally presented the 
Syracusans with their freedom, hoping, perhaps, by a 
piece of theatrical magnanimity to obtain the privilege 


VOL. I Q 


226 The Rulers of the South 


of dying in his bed. We do not know the truth, but he 
was no sooner dead in the flames of his own funeral 
pile than the people seized upon his possessions, de- 
stroyed his statues, and banished all his mercenaries, 
attendants, and creatures. Even Mainon, who had 
delivered them of the tyrant, fled from the city. He 
afterwards raised a force among Agathocles’ veterans 
and attempted to seize Syracuse, but was successfully 
opposed by the people, who chose a certain Icetes for 
their general. As Holm says, with his usual keenness, 
it is clear that Syracuse remained a free city for a 
time, as the citizens immediately made war upon each 
other. 

The days of Sicilian unity, such as it had been under 
Dionysius and Agathocles, were over, and were never 
to return. Icetes seized the tyranny of Syracuse, and 
tyrants sprang up in other cities, while Carthage still 
held her possessions in the west, and the Italian mer- 
cenaries of Agathocles founded a state of some power 
in the north, calling themselves Mamertines from 
Mamers, the Oscan god Mars, familiar in Roman 
mythology. It was to be foreseen that during the 
internal struggles which decimated the population of 
Syracuse, and surely destroyed its power, the Carthagin- 
ians would make another attempt at conquest. They 
appeared with a hundred ships and fifty thousand men 
and laid siege to the city as of old. Then Syracuse 
appealed to Pyrrhus, once the friend of Agathocles, 


The Greeks 2097 


who was called the Eagle and the Alexander of his 
day, and whose alliance had already been sought by 
Tarentum against the Romans. He dreamed of conquer- 
ing all Sicily, all Italy, all the world, and he equipped 
himself for a great struggle, and carried war into the 
heart of the Roman country. He beat the Romans 
in battle, but he knew, and said frankly, that a few 
more such victories would ruin him. He was in winter 
quarters in Tarentum when the Syracusan ambassadors 
came to him and implored his help. Hoping for easier 
conquests, he set out for Tauromenium with his army 
and his famous elephants. The Carthaginians did not 
await his coming, but withdrew with their fleet and 
their forces, and he entered Syracuse in triumph; the 
rival factions united to deliver up their city, their fleet, 
their army, and their treasure to his care. But he was 
determined to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily 
altogether, and he now advanced westward with more 
than thirty thousand men, accompanied by two hundred 
ships that sailed round the coast. 

Before Eryx, the lofty stronghold above Drepanon, a 
position which even now looks almost impregnable, he 
went forward alone and fully armed, and made his vow 
of games and sacrifices to Hercules; the trumpets 
sounded, the scaling-ladders were set against the walls, 
and he himself was the first to reach the rampart. 
Hand to hand he grappled with the foe, stabbing, 
thrusting, wrestling with superhuman strength, unhurt 


228 The Rulers of the South 


in the thick of the perilous fray, till men shrank away 
from him in awe, as if he had been a god, and the 
fortress was taken with great slaughter. A half-ruined 
medizval castle, partly a town gaol, is built round all 
that remains of Aphrodite’s temple —a bit of marble, 
a tank hollowed in the rock, and the marvel of Sicily 
lying far below in a haze of colour. As he stood there, 
the Molossian king must have felt that he could take 
the island in the hollow of his hand; and so he did. 
But he used his conquest ill, and he tried to press the 
people to serve under him against Carthage, until they 
rebelled; and he murdered some of the great in Syra- 
cuse, as the tyrants had always done; but before his 
expedition was ready he found himself so hemmed in 
by treachery, and smouldering revolution, and sedition, 
that he took an excuse to go back to Italy and left the 
island to itself. It is told that as he sailed away he 
looked back, and said to those about him that they were 
leaving behind them a great field, in which the Romans 
and the Carthaginians might exercise their arms. 
And so it came to pass, for he was beaten by the 
Romans at the river by Beneventum, on the same 
ground where Charles of Anjou destroyed Manfred and 
his army fifteen hundred years later, and where many 
other famous fights were fought in after times. 

With the reign of Hiero the Second the story of the 
Greeks in the south hastens to its close, while the vast 


shadow of Rome spreads wide over the mainland and 


The Greeks 229 


the islands. With the departure of Pyrrhus and the 
consequent freedom from all restraint, the old troubles 
broke out in Syracuse, the usual consequences followed, 
and while the citizens took one side, the soldiers took 
the other. The troops chose two generals, Hiero and 
another; they entered the city by treachery, got pos- 
session of the power, and from that time Hiero appears 
alone in command. He was aman of no great birth, 
but as soon as he had made himself ruler, the usual 
fables and legends were told of his childhood and early 
years; how he had been exposed to die of hunger as an 
infant, and afterwards recognized by his father; how, 
when he was a boy in school, a wolf rushed in and tore 
his tablets from his hand, and how, when he ran out 
to follow the wild beast and get them back, the school- 
house fell in, and he alone was saved of all the chil- 
dren; owls perched upon his lance, and eagles on his 
shield, in short, of him was told the whole cycle of 
fairy tales, which, for the people, distinguished the 
great man from the common crowd. Yet in one re- 
spect he was unlike the rest of those strong men who 
had grasped the power with rude hands and held it 
with an iron grip before him; he was young, kind, and 
gentle, and after the first bold stroke he seems to have 
held his own, or what he had taken for his own, more 
by the love of his subjects than by any rougher means. 
To strengthen his position he married the lovely Philis- 
tis, through whom he allied himself, by the female line, 


230 The Rulers of the South 


with the great house of Dionysius. Of all the beauti- 
ful heads which we find upon the gold and silver coins 
of Sicily, and there are many, none 
can compare with that of Hliero’s 
queen. One may fancy that Helen 
of Troy had such a face, or Semir- 
amis, or divine Athene herself, but 





it is hard to believe that so fair a 


COIN WITH THE HEAD 
OF QUEEN PHILISTIS 


woman ever lived; and if such little 
history of her as has come down 
to us be true, she was as good and wise as she was 
beautiful. 

Hiero could no longer hope to face Carthage in war 
as Agathocles had done, still less to stem the tide of 
Rome’s advancing might; he could not even hope to 
rule all Sicily, and he contented himself with opposing 
the nearer and more dangerous enemies of Syracuse. 
Foremost of these were the Mamertines, who had 
already given Pyrrhus trouble and whose compact 
strength was penetrating into the interior of Sicily like 
a wedge. Hiero did not ally himself with the Romans, 
but succeeded in keeping on good terms with them by 
occasionally doing them a service, and while they were 
engaged in conquering the people of Rhegium, he 
endeavoured to make himself master of Messina on the 
other side of the straits. After taking a number of 
small towns belonging to the Mamertines, he fought a 
pitched battle with them near Messina itself and so 


The Greeks 231 


completely defeated them that they were about to aban- 
don the city, when a Carthaginian fleet appeared, not 
with the open intention of helping the Mamertines, but 
with such a considerable force as left no doubt of their 
ultimate intentions, in Hiero’s mind. Contenting him- 
self with the victory he had won, he withdrew to Syra- 
cuse, where the people’ crowned him king with great 
festivities and rejoicing. Irom this time forward, Mes- 
sina was coveted by three powers,—by Hiero himself, 
by the Carthaginians, and by Rome; and as the pop- 
ulation divided itself into two parties, the one for Car- 
thage, the other for the Romans, it was almost a fore- 
gone conclusion that the latter should gain the upper 
hand. And so it happened. The Mamertines sent an 
embassy to Rome from Messina, asking for help, in the 
year 265 B.c., and the favourable answer returned by 
the Romans became the cause of the first Punic war. 

But this was not the end of Hiero’s reign, for the 
events which followed occupied a considerable time and 
it was not until he had governed more than fifty years, 
and was nearly ninety years of age, that he at last left 
his kingdom to his grandson, who, after a series of mis- 
takes chiefly attributable to his advisers, lost his life by 
the hands of conspirators and left his kingdom a prey 
to the Romans. 

It must not be forgotten that during Hiero’s long 
reign, Sicily became the battlefield of Rome and Car- 
thage, as Pyrrhus had seen that it must, and that the 


232 The Rulers of the South 


first part of the great struggle for empire occupied no 
less than three and twenty years, during which the war 
was waged without ceasing from one end of Sicily to 
the other, through more than half of Italy and over 
many hundred miles of sea. It must be remembered, 
however, that the first Punic war was called the Sicilian 
war in Rome, and that the first move of importance 
made by the Romans was the capture of Messina, or 
perhaps, as we should say, the occupation of that city, 
since Caius Claudius got possession of it without strik- 
ing a blow. As the Carthaginians had frequently done 
on former occasions, they now landed their forces at 
Lilybetum and marched along the southern coast 
towards Akragas, which now becomes Agrigentum in 
history. But the situation was not the same as in 
former times, since the adversary of Carthage was no 
longer Syracuse but Rome; and it was the object of 
Hanno, the Carthaginian general, to make alliance with 
the Sicilian cities against a common enemy instead of 
destroying everything he found in his way, as his prede- 
cessors had done. Hiero and the Syracusans joined 
him, as Agrigentum had already agreed to do, and the 
Sicilian armies moved up to the neighbourhood of Mes- 
sina, where it was expected that the fighting should 
begin. Before attempting to bring over his troops the 
Roman general, who was the consul Appius Claudius, 
attempted to persuade both the Carthaginians and 
Hiero to retire. “As soon as he had? received™ them 


The Greeks 243 


refusal, he brought a large force over by night, in all 
manner of little craft, of the roughest and poorest 
description, whereupon he got the nickname ‘ Caudex,’ 
which may be interpreted to mean the trunk of a tree 
hollowed to form a boat, in fact what we familiarly call 
a ‘dug-out.’ When one considers the difficulty of navi- 
gating the straits of Messina at the present day, when 
steam vessels under way sometimes become unmanage- 
able in the currents and are driven into collision, it 
must be admitted that what Appius Claudius accom- 
plished was no light undertaking, even with the help of 
fishermen and boatmen who knew the waters; yet the 
immediate result of the daring move was of less impor- 
tance than might have been expected. MHiero and his 
troops were nearer to Messina than the Carthaginians, 
and sustained the first attack, the result of which was 
so much to their disadvantage that Hiero withdrew 
towards Syracuse on the following night with all his 
force, and evidently with the intention of withdrawing 
from his alliance with Carthage as soon as possible. 
Left to deal with the Carthaginians only, the Romans 
found them strongly intrenched between the little 
lagoons, which are still to be seen near the Faro, and 
the sea, and after a fruitless attempt to carry the works 
Appius Claudius left a garrison in Messina and made a 
move against Syracuse. He accomplished nothing, 
however, though he exposed himself to great personal 
risk, and he soon afterwards retired to Italy. 


234 The Rulers of the South 


In a book of the present dimensions it is impossible 
to narrate in detail the stirring events of the first 
Punic war, even so far as they concern Sicily. The 
reader to whom German or Italian is familiar should 
read the masterly work of Holm, whom I have fol- 
lowed very closely in the main, and of whom Pro- 
fessor Freeman says that he appears to have collected 
everything of value in Sicilian history, and from the 
most varied sources. The principal matter with which 
we are concerned is the general condition of affairs 
in the south, when the first war with Carthage began, 
and the general result upon the country when the 
war ended, after a duration of twenty-two years. 

When Pyrrhus had been decisively beaten, Rome 
ruled the south of Italy to the Straits, having gradu- 
ally got possession of all those rich Greek cities, and 
their dependencies, which had still refused to acknow- 
ledge her supremacy after she had finally defeated 
the Samnites and Gauls at Sentinum in 295 B.c. Her 
occupation of Messina gave her a hold upon Sicily, 
which was before long greatly strengthened by the 
more or less voluntary submission of a great num- 
ber of other cities that foresaw the result of the 
struggle and wished to be on the winning side, even 
though the Romans were exacting allies. As for 
Hiero, he waited and temporized, with a skill at which 
we can only guess, but which proves him to have 


possessed that true historical sense that alone can 


The Greeks 235 


give a keen intuition of future history, and which has 
been possessed by every really great statesman in all 
times; and after manoeuvring to avoid anything like 
a battle with the Romans, so long as he was still 
nominally on the Carthaginian side, he became con- 
vinced that the Romans were to be the winners, and 
he openly allied himself with them. A Carthaginian 
fleet which arrived near Syracuse soon afterwards, 
ostensibly to help him, but of course in the hope of 
getting control of the city as a base of operations, 
sailed away again. The conditions of the alliance 
acknowledged Hiero as king of a small territory in the 
southeast corner of the island, but required of him 
the payment of a proportionate tribute to Rome, and 
it is no wonder if Hiero, remembering the deeds of 
his predecessors, who had never really consolidated 
their power, should have supposed that Rome could 
conquer Carthage with comparative ease. From the 
outbreak of the first Punic war to the destruction of 
Carthage, the fight lasted a hundred and eighteen 
years; but though Hiero was deceived as to the mag- 
nitude of the memorable struggle, his judgment of 
the result was correct, and his instinct was not at 
fault in regard to the immediate advantages of the 
alliance he made. If he had remained the friend of 
Carthage, there can be no doubt but that Syracuse 
would have become their chief stronghold, instead of 
Agrigentum, and would have suffered the final dis- 


236 The Rulers of the South 


aster which overtook that city. Instead, and without 
at any time performing any brilliant action, or win- 
ning any great battle, he shielded Syracuse from 
danger throughout his reign, and at Jast made him- 
self so indispensable to Rome that she was forced to 
accept from him a present of money, which the Senate 
would have given much to refuse, for the sake of 
Rome’s dignity; yet, as soon as the first long war 
was over, he helped the Carthaginians to put down 
the great mutiny that broke out in their own army. 
His character was upright and honourable in the 
extreme, and while protecting his small kingdom from 
the consequences of the war which was being waged 
between the two great nations, he devoted himself to 
its welfare in every other way, improved its agricul- 
ture and made it one of the most important trading 
states in the world, at a time when the commerce of 
Carthage was necessarily greatly reduced. The position 
occupied by Syracuse under Hiero may aptly be com- 
pared with that of Belgium from the date of its indepen- 
dence to the present day, though under a totally different 
form of government, and in widely different conditions ; 
but a solid modern representative government pos- 
sesses over the very best form of the ancient absolute 
monarchy the inestimable advantage that its stability 
at no time depends upon the genius of an individual, 
and therefore, to use a comparison from commerce, 
it bears the same relation to absolutism that a long- 


The Greeks 2A 


established corporation bears to an individual banker 
who has no partners. 

While the Romans were besieging Agrigentum, los- 
ing a fleet at Lipari, winning battles in the west of the 
island, slowly driving their enemies back and estab- 
lishing their power with that astonishing comprehen- 
sion of military supply which they early displayed in 
warfare, Hiero was enriching Syracuse, extending 
his trade and multiplying those resources of wealth 
and provisions which made him indispensable to the 
Romans themselves. His success in this respect 
proves what Sicily could do in peace after a century 
and a half of bloodshed, or much more, if one choose 
to go farther back, beyond the first Carthaginian inva- 
sion —a century and a half of foreign wars, internal 
dissensions, race struggles, and cruel tyrannies. The 
same boundless recuperative power is in the island 
to-day, and the time is not far distant when the com- 
merce and manufactures of Sicily will equal that of all 
Italy, from the straits to Florence, and will compare 
favourably with that of the whole Italian peninsula. 

Hiero’s government has been described as a wise 
combination of magnificence and economy, of strength 
and gentleness; he dealt with foreign powers in the 
name of the Syracusan people, not in his own; he 
refused the outward insignia of royalty, and seems to 
have lived simply in the vast city he had restored and 
beautified, surrounding himself with such men of tal- 


238 The Rulers of the South 


ent as he could attract to Syracuse. He made pres- 
ents of great value not only to Rome but .to Egypt, 
and even to Rhodes, most often in the form of corn 
and probably in times of scarcity ; but we hear no 
tales of his own extravagance, still less of any exces- 
sive exactions, whether to satisfy his own caprices or 
for any purpose of aggrandizement or conquest. His 
was a model government for times of peace; it lacked 
every element, except wealth, which could have made 
it successful in war, and would have been obliged, like 
Carthage, to employ mercenaries altogether, for lack 
of a standing army. Two great nations, the one war- 
like, the other commercial, tried the two methods on 
a vast scale, and Carthage, the commercial nation, lost 
in the end, and the poor Roman annihilated the rich 
Phoenician. 

The greatest man at Hiero’s court was without 
doubt Archimedes, and the most extraordinary of 
Hiero’s works, though by far the least useful, was the 
ship of four thousand and two hundred tons which he 
sent to Alexandria as a present to Ptolemy. 

Archimedes was born in 287 B.c., being according 
to some authorities a relative of Hiero’s family. He 
must certainly be ranked with the greatest mathema- 
ticlans and mechanics that ever lived, and his natural 
gifts developed to the proportions of genius in the 
congenial atmosphere of Syracuse. It will be remem- 
bered that the Syracusans at all times showed consid- 


The Greeks 239 


erable inventive talent, especially in the arts of war, 
and that the elder Dionysius held a sort of congress 
of engineers and shipbuilders, who designed the first 
ships that were built with five banks of oars, as well 
as the long-range catapults which did such execution 
upon the Carthaginian fleet, when planted at the 
entrance of the harbour. The magnitude of the 
works which remain in Syracuse, the astonishing ease 
with which the builders handled the great masses of 
stone, the marvellous beauty of the theatre hewn out 
of the live rock, by sheer quarrying and without any 
builder’s work, the graceful curves and the harmoni- 
ous proportions of the amphitheatre, which far sur- 
passes the Roman colosseum, and which almost rivals 
it in size, all these show to what a height the art of 
architecture, the science of mathematics, and the skill 
of the stone-cutter were carried in the only city of 
that day which rivalled Athens and Alexandria. 
From his earliest youth Archimedes must have 
watched the builders at work and studied the plans 
and sketches and working drawings that were used on 
the spot, and his intensely practical genius must have 
begun to grapple with the greatest problems in 
mathematics and the most difficult theorems of geom- 
etry, long before he dreamed that he possessed the 
power to solve the one or demonstrate the other. The 
results his studies have left to the world are enormous, 
and can hardly be completely understood without some 


240 The Rulers of the South 


mathematical learning. His method of squaring the 
parabola was the first step towards all accurate meas- 
urement of curved figures. His: discovery of the 
relation between a cylinder, of which the height 
equals the diameter, to the greatest sphere it can con- 
tain, has remained for all time one of the greatest 
mathematical feats accomplished by the human mind. 
His theory of the centre of gravity justified Lagrange 
in calling him the father of mechanics. He was the 
discoverer of specific gravity, which is one of the chief 
foundations of modern chemistry, and it was when he 
found, in testing a gold crown for the king, that the 
difference between the weight of any body when 
weighed in the air and when weighed under water is 
equal to the weight of the volume of water which 
the object displaces, that he uttered his memorable 
exclamation, ‘Eureka!’ ‘I have found it!” That he 
should have invented the lever as a mechanical engine 
is impossible, but he undoubtedly invented some of 
its applications, and he must have discovered its laws 
when he said, ‘Give me a place to stand and I will 
move the world.’ Holm doubts whether he actually 
set fire to the Roman fleet with a burning-glass, when, 
after Hiero’s death, the city was besieged by Marcel- 
lus; but the historian cites two interesting parallel 
instances to prove that such a feat was possible. In 
514 A.D. Proculus is said to have fired Vitalian’s fleet 
before Constantinople by the same means. Further, 


The Greeks 241 


in 1747 Buffon succeeded in setting fire to wood at a 
distance of a hundred and fifty feet, and in melting 
lead at a hundred and forty feet, by means of a sys- 
tem of one hundred and sixty movable mirrors, by 
which, in the month of April, and when the sunlight 





PEASANT WOMAN OF MONTELEONE 


was not strong, he concentrated the sun’s rays upon 
a point. Archimedes invented countless machines of 
less importance, such as the hydraulic serpent, which 
was probably the instrument worked by a single man 
in pumping out Hiero’s ship. His whole life was 


VOL. I R 


242 The Rulers of the South 


spent in the application of mathematics and mechan- 
ics to useful needs in peace and war. His end was 
characteristic of his life, for when Marcellus, on tak- 
ing Syracuse, gave orders that no one should harm 
him, it is said that a soldier came upon him unawares 
and stepped upon the figure he was drawing in sand. 
The man of genius protested sharply against the dis- 
turbance. The soldier drew his sword and killed the 
greatest man in the world with a foolish laugh. 

We have in Athenzus a very elaborate description 
of the great ship which Hiero built and launched inside 
the harbour of Syracuse. Judging from the nature of 
the ground, and with some knowledge of shipbuilding, 
I think that it would have been impossible to build a 
vessel of four thousand tons and more in the arsenal 
near Ortygia. The work must have been done in the 
low land by the shore, outside the gate, and between it 
and the swamp. 

Athenzeus says that Hiero brought enough timber 
from Mount Etna to build sixty triremes and that he 
got planks and lumber for various purposes from other 
parts of Sicily and from Italy. Archias the Corin- 
thian was the chief builder, and three hundred work- 
men were employed only to trim the timber. As 
soon as the planking was finished it was covered 
with sheet lead, as we use sheet copper. The hull 
was built in six months, and Archimedes launched it 
by a system of screws worked by a few persons. The 


‘hestrreeks 243 


vessel was bolted with brass, and brass nails were used, 
the holes being plugged with lead, driven in upon 
tarred canvas. The ship was constructed with twenty 
banks of oars, and here it is as well to say at once that 
nothing whatever is known as to the arrangement of 
the banks, even in the ordinary trireme; the late Pro- 
fessor Breusing, who was not only for many years the 
director of the celebrated naval school in Bremerhaven, 
but also a very eminent philologian, has completely 
destroyed the old-fashioned belief of scholars that three 
banks of oars situated one above the other could under 
any circumstances be pulled at the same time. Those 
who are interested in the subject may consult his inval- 
uable work, ‘Die Nautik der Alten.’ That Hiero’s ship 
had at least three decks is certain from the otherwise 
confusing description of Athenzeus. He says that it 
had three entrances, the lowest leading to the hold, 
which was reached by two long ladders; the second 
gave access to the eating-rooms, and the third was for 
the soldiers. A great number of rooms are described, 
of which the floors were made of mosaic and depicted 
very beautifully the whole story of the Iliad. On the 
upper deck was a gymnasium, and also a garden filled 
with all sorts of plants, set in casks full of earth, and 
there were walks shaded with awnings, and a temple to 
Venus paved with Sicilian agate, the walls and roof 
being made of cypress wood and the doors of ivory 
and citron. There was a state cabin, containing five 


244 The Rulers of the South 


couches, a bookcase, and a clock set into the ceiling, 
and there was a complete bath having a tank lined with 
marble from Tauromenium. There were also stalls for 
ten horses on each side. In the fore part of the vessel 
there was a large fresh-water tank made of wood and 
tarred canvas, and holding two thousand measures; 
there was also a fish tank filled with salt water.  Fig- 
ures of Atlas at well-proportioned intervals, and appar- 
ently carved in wood, carried the rail or were placed 
outside the bulwarks to support the great weight of the 
wooden turrets. There was a catapult on deck which 
hurled a stone weighing three talents, or an arrow 
twelve cubits long, equivalent to eighteen feet. The 
vessel had three masts, each carrying two yards, which 
latter were fitted with a curious device for dropping 
heavy weights upon an attacking vessel. Finally, the 
bulwark was protected with iron throughout, and there 
were a number of very long grappling hooks. 

This vast construction appears to have _ been 
launched and sent to sea as a present to Ptolemy 
during a time of dearth in Egypt, with an enormous 
cargo, consisting of sixty thousand measures of corn, 
ten thousand jars of Sicilian salt fish, five hundred 
tons’ weight of wool, and five hundred tons of other 
freight. 

The reign of Hiero the Second connects the story 
of the Greeks with that of the Romans, and his 
alliance with the latter helped to determine the future 


The Greeks 245 


position of Sicily; the destinies of the southern main- 
Jand were already decided, and Italy was altogether 
Roman. One of the most important turning points 
in Roman history was the subjugation of the great 
island, which became Rome’s first province, because 
it was too thoroughly Hellenic to be incorporated 
in the Republic. The influence and domination of 
the Greeks in the south had lasted, at the beginning 
of the first Punic war, from about 700 B.c. to 
264 B.c., that is to say, more than four hundred 
years, during which the original elements of the 
population, as well as the greater part of the Phe- 
nician colonies in Sicily, had become completely 
hellenized in speech, manners, and culture, and to a 
great extent also in blood, by constant intermarriages 
in time of peace. The reason why greater Greece 
never became a consolidated empire lay in the 
Greek character, and not in the lack of enterprise, 
of military ability, or of a common interest. Had 
the whole south at any time remained united for a 
century, it would have easily grown to be a match 
for Carthage. The astonishing success of Gelon, of 
the elder Dionysius, and of Agathocles, are sufficient 
proof that this is true. But the Greek had neither 
the Roman’s conception of political unity, nor the 
Carthaginian’s commercial talent. He was as inca- 
pable of sinking his highly original personality in the 
ranks of an organization as he was of devoting his 


246 The Rulers of the South 


whole energies to money making; he was a free lance 
rather than a trained soldier; an artist, not a middle- 
class citizen; a man of genius, not a banker. In the 
heat of enthusiasm there were few feats which he 
could not accomplish, but his restless blood could 
not brook the daily round of a humdrum existence. 
In war he loved the brilliant pageant, the high pzan 
song, the splendid arms, the woven garlands, the air 
of triumph before the battle, and the trophy and the 
sacrifice after the fight. When peace followed war, 
he craved the excitement of the great Greek games, 
the emotions of the almost impossibly beautiful in 
art, the heart-beating of the reckless player throwing 
for high stakes, the physical intoxication of wine, and 
the intellectual intoxication of the theatre; and when 
these palled he lost patience with peace and became 
the most gratuitously quarrelsome of human beings, 
taking offence at the hue of his neighbour’s cloak, 
attacking a friend for an imaginary slight upon the 
least of his innumerable vanities, and making war 
about nothing, with the fine conviction of a thor- 
oughly ill-tempered child that smashes its new doll 
to atoms rather than be good for five minutes. 
There is often something rudimentary and childlike 
in very gifted men; a lack of patience that makes 
the long way of thought intolerably irksome and 
drives the man of genius to the accomplishment of 
the apparently impossible by the shortest road. 


The Greeks 247 


As the Greek was individually, so were the Greeks 
in a body, wherever they established themselves, in 
the fertile plains and undulating hills of Asia Minor, 
in the wild mountains and isolated valleys of their 
own Greece, and in that greater Hellas with which 
this story has been concerned. They were always at 
odds with each other, and they rarely fought a 
foreign foe without seeing the faces of their born 
countrymen in the ranks that opposed them; they 
were alike incapable of submitting without a murmur 
to the rule of a single master, and of governing 
themselves as one whole by the orderly judgment of 
the many. Wherever they appeared they excited 
admiration and they often inspired terror; wherever 
they dwelt, even for a brief term of years, they left 
behind them works of lasting beauty; but whereas, 
as artists, as poets, and as philosophers, they created 
a standard that has made rivalry impossible and 
imitation ridiculous, their government has left no 
trace in the lands they once inhabited, and their 
laws have had less influence upon the subsequent 
law-givers of mankind than those of the Chinese or 
the Aztecs. In their arts and in their literature 
they worked for all time; in their government they 
were opportunists and intriguers, when they were 
not visionaries, and the type of their race having 
disappeared from the world, the conditions under 
which it lived are beyond the comprehension of 


248 The Rulers of the South 


other civilized peoples. ‘These Greeks,’ said the 
Roman, ‘can do everything to perfection, yet they 
are the barbers and we are the pretors.’ The slight 
foundation of truth contained in the paradox explains 
the failure of the Greek race to reach that height 
of domination to which many other races have at- 
tained. When we see what they did for themselves 
we cannot but wish that they might have obtained 
the power to do as much for others, that they might 
have outnumbered and outfought the Romans, spread- 
ing over Italy, over Europe, over Asia, and Africa 
as the Romans did. The vast monuments of Rome 
would have been as perfect in beauty as they are 
stupendous in dimensions; four-fifths or nine-tenths 
of the best Greek literature would not have perished 
utterly, or have been preserved in miserable frag- 
ments; and the enlightenment of an Augustan age 
might not, perhaps, have been closely followed by 
the brutal horrors of a Nero’s reign. 

But these are idle dreams. The Greeks filled the 
south with their monuments and overspread it with 
their civilization during more than four centuries, and 
when the end of their story came they were no nearer to 
extinction as a people than the Poles were when their 
kingdom was divided among the nations of Europe. 
They simply ceased to have any political existence and 
became, with all they had, with their resources un- 
diminished, their wealth unspent, their energies still all 






* * 
} 
* 


i | STuBMARYP® | 
ice eave OF THE | 
“UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


‘ 


a 7 i 








sili. pV é 
Eo ain ot 


se 









ITALY AND SICILY 


UNDER ROMAN RULE. 
SCALE OF MILES 










46" 











4¢ a sh wil 








sient i 
Sy, ‘aetoria 


£5} porec q 









orem 









wiDer 
A AH 








Volaternaés aI 












amt 











HERCULIS 1. 





40 





















Oo 7 
Pn Ay iMonede ae 


Ue iN te Lie Felsina 












oPisonrum “+ 


sere aN ant om 


nB tea a, 


wp tes 






ra 


Sn 
Ye 
Kae Ce 


ie 








a 





ILVA Wann te 
ayy 


° erakernsia ) 










A Tlu i 7 









rium 


gor ne Pah ei hoe s 


ro i 
Lar entinus 













Hippo 
o Cirta Regius 


afterwards Constantina 








Sinus 


Lilybaeum , 








Mercurii P. 


COSSYRA o> 


\ Neapolitanus 36 












Longitude 28 East 














3) Caput Vada 





ENGRAVED BY BORMAY & CO., NY, 








Neapolis 





BY 








G Z Hyd rus 
Ci ejlipolis 

















The Romans 249 


alive within them, the possession, body and soul, of a 
race that had mastered the only art they could never 
learn, the art of governing men; and thereafter, recog- 
nizing once and for always their position as a part of 
their conquerors’ property, they worked for him and for 
Roman money as they had once laboured for glory and 
for themselves ; and in the slow decadence of genius in 
captivity, their supreme gifts were weakened by degrees, 
then scattered, and then lost. Henceforth the history of 
the south becomes for more than half a thousand years 
the story of the Romans, from the days of Appius 
Claudius who took Messina till after the times of 
Christian Constantine. 


The Romans 


THE first Punic war, which was brought on by the 
appeal of the Mamertines to Rome, and lasted twenty- 
two years, was the turning-point in Roman history and 
the beginning of Rome’s empire. The first Punic war 
means the conquest of Sicily, and since Rome held 
Messina and was in alliance with Syracuse, the struggle 
took place chiefly in the western and southern part of 
the island. It is no easy matter to sketch briefly a con- 
test in which the winner lost seven hundred ships and 
an untold number of men; it is impossible to condense 
into a few pages anything more than the shortest 
possible account of the principal battles fought, and this 


250 The Rulers of the South 


I shall endeavour to do with as much clearness as the 
difficult nature of the subject admits, henceforth calling 
places by their Latin names or by their modern ones. 

The war opened slowly. For more than two hundred 
years Rome and Carthage had maintained towards one 
another an attitude of distrust without hostility, and 
when the two great powers were at last in open opposi- 
tion for the possession of Sicily, they fenced and 
manceuvred for some time, as if testing their relative 
strength. Rome took Messina at the start, and having 
got the valuable alliance of Hiero, proceeded to sub- 
jugate the centre of Sicily, west of the little Syracusan 
kingdom. Carthage held Agrigentum as an outpost 
on the southern coast, Panormus was the centre of her 
strength, and the strong position she maintained at 
Lilybeeum was her base of supplies from Africa. In 
the smaller cities inland which were under her control 
there were few Carthaginians. 

The Romans proceeded to attack Agrigentum, and 
during a siege that lasted seven months, in the year 
262 B.c., they would have been themselves cut off and 
starved, but for the timely supplies sent them by Hiero. 
The siege ended with a great battle in the hollow land 
west of the city and above Porto Empedocle. After 
long and stubborn fighting, the Romans succeeded in 
terrifying the enemy’s elephants, as in the battle against 
Pyrrhus at Beneventum, and the whole Carthaginian 


army was soon in confusion, and was mercilessly cut to 


The Romans os 


pieces. In the night that followed, the remainder of 
the Carthaginians crept out of the city, crossed the be- 
sieger’s trenches by filling a short extent of them with 
sacks stuffed with husks, and succeeded in escaping. 





ON THE ROAD AT GIRGENTI, FORMERLY AGRIGENTUM 


In the morning the Romans occupied and plundered 
the city without destroying it, as it was a valuable posi- 
tion. They sold twenty-five thousand of the inhabitants 
as slaves, and in that connexion it may be noticed that 
the vast number of captives who suffered this fate in 


22 The Rulers of the South 


successive wars formed, in time, that race of slaves 
which long afterwards rose in power against Rome. 
Carthage might now have proposed a peace which 
the Romans would have accepted, had she not been the 
greatest sea power of the age. She preferred to con- 
tinue the struggle, and Rome understood at once that 
without a fleet it would be impossible to get possession 
of western Sicily and hold it. During the year 261 B.c., 
the Romans accordingly equipped a number of ships, 
no less than a hundred and twenty, and put to sea. 
The first aim of the expedition was to seize Lipari, in 
order to have a naval station in the neighbourhood of 
Panormus. The squadron of seventeen Roman vessels 
engaged in this undertaking surrendered to the Cartha- 
ginian fleet without striking a blow, but soon afterwards 
an engagement took place on the Sicilian coast in which 
Carthage lost a larger number. From first to last, and 
in spite of her great inferiority in shipbuilding and 
seamanship, Rome only lost one naval battle during the 
whole war, at Drepanum. After the first engagement, 
the Romans were quick to see that their enemies were 
superior in skill and rapidity, and they retorted by fitting 
all their own vessels with strong grappling irons, an 
invention which turned every naval engagement into a 
hand-to-hand fight, in which the Romans were gen- 
erally sure of success. The first time these were used 
was in the same year, at Milazzo, under Caius Duilius, 
who took or destroyed fifty Carthaginian vessels, of _ 


The Romans 253 


which the beaks were taken to Rome and set up as a 
trophy on the famous ‘columna rostrata ’ in the Forum ; 
and it was decreed that ever afterwards, when Duilius 
went home from any feast by night, he should be 
accompanied by torch-bearers and musicians. 

The Romans fought with varying fortune on the 
island, while their fleet attacked Sardinia; and there 
one of the many Carthaginian generals who bore the 
name of Hannibal met them and was defeated, and suf- 
fered for his defeat on the cross. But in Sicily the 
Carthaginians strengthened themselves by fortifying 
the ‘sickle’ of Drepanum, and Trapani, and bringing 
down thither a number of the inhabitants of Mount 
Eryx; and Drepanum and Lilybeum each defended 
the other, so that the difficulty of seizing either was very 
great. These things occupied two years. Then at last 
the Romans made their first attack upon Panormus, 
but could not take it, and their army marched up inland 
and besieged a strong place called Mytistratum, on 
one side of which was an ascent so steep that it was 
almost a cliff, and seemed to need no defence. But 
when the siege did not advance, a devoted man, M. 
Calpurnius Flamma, climbed the rugged approach 
with four hundred men, all sworn to die, in order that 
while they drew the defenders to that side, the Romans 
might take the place by the other; and so it happened, 
and they all died like men, and the Romans won the 


town. 


254 The Rulers of the South 


At this time the only real base of operations upon 
which the Romans could rely was Agrigentum, and the 
necessity impressed itself more and more upon them of 
getting possession of the great seaports in the west, an 
object which could only be attained by means of a pow- 
erful fleet. This they did not as yet possess, though 
they obtained a naval advantage in 257 B.c., when they 
sank or captured eighteen Carthaginian ships off Li- 
pari. They had, however, an ample number of trans- 
ports, and since the Carthaginians continually made 
forays upon the Italian coast, it seemed practicable to 
retaliate by sending an army to Africa. To this end 
great preparations were made, and in the year 256 B.c., 
three hundred and thirty Roman ships, many of which 
must have been very lately built, set sail for Africa with 
a hundred and forty thousand men. This great expedi- 
tion was met by an even larger Carthaginian force near 
the headland of Ecnomus, now Licata, on the south coast 
of Sicily. As they came in sight of each other, the two 
fleets fermed in line of battle: the Carthaginians divided 
their vessels into three squadrons, which appear to have 
moved forward simultaneously; the Romans advanced 
in an entirely different order, which was then quite new 
in naval tactics, the attack being led by the two Roman 
admirals, whose squadrons followed them in more and 
more extended order, so that the admirals’ ships united 
to form the point of a wedge, behind which another 
squadron brought up the transports, while a fourth pro- 


The Romans | 255 


tected the rear. The plan of the Carthaginians was to 
let their centre give way before the Roman wedge, 
which was then to be caught and destroyed by the 
Carthaginian wings. The result was disastrous to the 
Carthaginian fleet; the Roman centre was completely 
victorious at the first onslaught, and when attacked by 
the Carthaginian wings, the latter were crushed by the 
Romans’ second squadron. Carthage lost in this en- 
gagement ninety-four ships, and made overtures for 
peace, which were refused, however, and the Romans 
sailed on unhindered to Africa. 

This was the celebrated expedition under Regulus, 
which, after many signal successes, was destined to 
total defeat in the year 255 B.c. The whole Roman 
force, excepting two thousand men, was destroyed, and 
when Rome sent another fleet to rescue the remnant, it 
also perished in a storm upon the Sicilian coast, between 
Camarina and Pachynus. Taking quick advantage of 
her enemy’s disaster, Carthage now recaptured Agri- 
gentum and several other points of minor importance. 
Defeat and disaster, instead of disheartening the Ro- 
mans, roused them to enormous efforts, and in the 
incredibly short space of three months two hundred 
and twenty new ships were built and sent to sea. 

In 254 B.c. the Romans took Drepanum, but failed 
to hold it long, and at once turned their whole strength 
against Panormus, which they blockaded by land and 
sea. At that time the harbour occupied a part of the 


256 The Rulers of the South 


present city, the sea running much further inland than 
it now does, so that the neck connecting the height 
now called Monte Pellegrino with the land was far 
narrower than at present. While the Romans be- 
leaguered the city, the Carthaginian general held the 
promontory and the isthmus, and was supported by his 
fleet, which was able to approach the neck from the 
other side. The Romans made no serious effort to dis- 
lodge him but turned their whole attention to the city, 
which they before long starved to surrender. They now 
controlled the three best harbours of the island, for Pa- 
normus and Messina were theirs, while their alliance with 
Hiero placed Syracuse at their disposal. Nevertheless, 
Carthage still held Monte Pellegrino with a small force, 
and apparently unmolested. In 253 B.c., after a second 
attempt upon Africa, the Romans lost another large 
fleet in a storm. After this, they for a time made no 
further effort to establish their superiority by sea, but 
in the following year, with only sixty transports, which 
could not be classed as war-ships, they seized and held 
the long-coveted island of Lipari. 

The turning-point of the first Punic war came in the 
following year, when the Romans defeated the whole 
Carthaginian force in a great battle before Panor- 
mus. The Carthaginians on Monte Pellegrino had 
received large reénforcements from Africa, and at 
last attempted to recapture the city. The Romans 
awaited their approach under the walls and only 


The Romans 257 


sent out a small detachment to harass the enemy’s 
flank. When the Carthaginian elephants were at 
close quarters, the Romans adopted their usual tactics, 
maddening the beasts with darts and arrows until 
the whole line was thrown into confusion. The main 
body of the Roman army, which had been stand- 
ing under arms, then charged, and the victory was 
immediate and complete. The elephants adorned the 
triumph of Metellus in Rome, and the Romans were 
now masters of the greater part of Sicily. The 
Carthaginians sued for peace, and hoping to obtain 
it on good terms sent Regulus, whom they had held 
four years a prisoner, to intercede for them in the 
Senate. They had misjudged the man. Instead of 
following their instructions, and fully aware of the 
fate that awaited him, he urged the Romans to grant 
no peace at any price. He spoke, he took leave of 
his family and of his friends, and he calmly returned 
to die a death of unimagined torture. 

It now seemed certain that if Lilybaeum could be 
taken, the war would be at an end, and in the follow- 
ing year, 250 B.c.,a powerful fleet was sent out for 
that purpose. The Romans proceeded to a regular 
siege, which was destined to be long and tedious. By 
the most skilful seamanship, and thorough knowledge 
of wind and water, a Carthaginian leader entered the 
harbour of Lilybzeum with fifty war-ships, in the face 
of the Roman fleet of two hundred sail, and having 


VOL. I S 


258 The Rulers of the South 


supplied the city with provisions, sailed out again 
with the same success, and anchored further north 
in Drepanum, thus strengthening the already numer- 
ous fleet that occupied that port. Immediately after- 
wards, a certain Carthaginian seaman, surnamed the 
Rhodian, ran the blockade again and again with a 
single vessel, establishing a regular communication 
between Carthage and the beleaguered city. The 
superiority of the Carthaginian vessels was so great 
that before long the blockade became utterly derisory, 
and the Romans attempted to close the entrance of the 
harbour by a dam. Before it was half finished a 
first-rate Carthaginian ship ran aground upon the 
work. The Romans promptly captured it, and turn- 
ing their prize to advantage soon caught the Rhodian 
blockade runner. 

But they were not destined to immediate success, 
for before long a southwesterly gale, which must have 
blown with the force of a hurricane, wrecked their 
siege engines, which were promptly fired by the Lily- 
beians. The Romans now attempted to starve the 
city to submission, being themselves supplied with 
provisions by Hiero. In 249 B.c. a Roman army 
safely reached Lilybeum by land from the interior, 
and the general who now took command made an 
attempt upon Drepanum by sea; it ended in the only 
real defeat which the Romans suffered in any naval 
engagement during the war. The disaster was due to 


The Romans 259 


the Roman ships being so crowded together that they 
could not use their grappling irons. In this year 
misfortune pursued the Romans, and they lost another 
large fleet during a gale on the south coast, while the 
Carthaginian squadron that was observing them suc- 
ceeded in running under the lee to the eastward. 
The attempt upon Drepanum had failed, and the 
Roman losses were enormous, yet Eryx was taken 
and held, and the position is a commanding one. 
Once more the Romans retired temporarily from the 
sea, with the result that the enemy gained new cour- 
age to face them on land. At this time appears on 
the Carthaginian side a man of genius, Hamilcar, sur- 
named Barca, the ‘lightning.’ He once more seized 
Monte Pellegrino, which the Carthaginians had aban- 
doned, and retrieving the ill-fortune of his  prede- 
cessors he kept the Romans at bay during the greater 
part of six years. It was not until 243 B.c. that Rome 
called upon her citizens to build ships at their private 
expense, promising them full indemnity in case of 
ultimate success. The rich citizens responded mag- 
nificently to the call made upon them, and in 242 B.c. 
two hundred vessels, built on the model of the cap- 
tured blockade runners, suddenly appeared before 
Lilybzeum, to the great surprise of the enemy. In 
greatest haste, Carthage sent forth the last fleet she 
was able to raise, for her resources had been severely 
taxed, and she appears at that time to have been 


260 The Rulers of the South 


grappling with difficulties at home. The engagement 
which followed, and which was fought about the 
islands off Drepanum, resulted in the most overwhelm- 
ing defeat. Fifty Carthaginian ships were sunk, 
seventy were captured with all hands on board, and 
the victors sailed into the harbour of Lilybaum with 
no less than ten thousand prisoners. 

The first Punic war was over, and the Romans 
remained in undisputed possession of Sicily, with the 
exception of the small kingdom they left to Hiero, 
their firm ally. Carthage was obliged, by the terms 
of the peace, to pay the sum of three thousand two 
hundred talents, equivalent to nearly eight hundred 
thousand pounds sterling, in the space of ten years; 
and besides Sicily, all the islands between Sicily and 
Italy were to be abandoned to the Romans. The 
latter interpreted the clause as including Sardinia, 
and took possession of it within a few years. 

The south had peace. Wise in all his ways, Hiero 
returned as far as he could to the neutrality which 
he had always wished to preserve, and while he was 
forced to serve Rome and held his kingdom at her 
pleasure, he was careful to avoid giving offence to 
Carthage. He strengthened the friendships he had 
formed with Egypt and with Rhodes. When a fear- 
ful earthquake in the latter place destroyed a great 
part of the capital and overthrew the famous Colos- 
sus, he sent the Rhodians a hundred talents, which 


The Romans 261 


are nearly twenty-five thousand pounds, in money, and 
many costly vessels for the temples, and engines for 
building, and he removed the export duties on corn 
sent from Syracuse to Rhodes. Moreover he set up 
two statues in the market-place there. Though Athe- 
nzus gives no date for the building of the great ship, 
the Alexandrian already described, it must have been 
constructed during the twenty-four years’ peace which 
followed the first Punic war. Among the presents 
which Ptolemy sent to Hiero in return was the papy- 
rus, which the latter planted on the banks of the river 
Anapus, and though it is extinct in Egypt, and is not 
found growing naturally in any other part of the 
world, the river banks are full of it to this day, for 
two or three miles, after more than two thousand 
years. 

If Syracuse were not one of the most beautiful 
places in the world, that one sight should be enough to 
take many a scholar there to-day. The stream is deep 
and swift, and quite silent, running through the low land 
where so many thousands of brave men have perished. 
Clear as crystal it is, and ever cool, so that it is good 
to drink of it even in the dog days; and the papyrus 
grows as thick beside it as canes in the southern brake, 
nine and ten feet high, gracefully straight, but often 
drooping till the tufts of silky green wet their tiny 
gold-green blossoms in the gliding water; green from 
root to crown, the delicate stem, as thick as a man’s 


262 The Rulers of the South 


wrist at the ground, tapers finely to the plume that 
is a cloud of tangled curves. The stream is often 
barely ten feet wide, and nowhere more than twenty 





PAPYRUS IN THE RIVER ANAPUS NEAR SYRACUSE 


till it widens to a circle in the spring of Kyane, five 
fathoms deep, and clear as glass, the source of the 
lower branch. The shade is deep and soft, and from 


The Romans 263 


the bottom the thick river grass reflects a darker green 
through the smooth surface. Shadowy dragon-flies, 
black, and amaranth, and light sky blue, dart in and 
out among the stems, or hover over the velvet-like 
weed that floats in the shade under the bank. It is a 
place where one feels that river gods and nymphs are 
alive forever in the truth of poetry, which is itself 
that fourth dimension in our understanding wherein 
all is possible, and all that is possible is beautiful, and 
all that has beauty is true. 

On the desolate southeast coast of Malta, looking 
- towards the molten enamel of the southern sea, white- 
hot under the pitiless sun, out of sight of humanity, 
there are certain ruins of Phcenician temples, the places 
of worship of Ashtaroth, or of Moloch, or of Baal. 
Huge slabs of rock, split off from the mountain, and 
neither carved nor plainly hewn, are thrust upright 
into the stony soil, side by side, for walls, in strange 
curves and rough half circles, like Druid stones, with 
ereat blocks set here and there upon uncouth pedestals, 
and masses of rock that figure nameless powers of 
nature; and there are small chambers, within which 
two persons can hardly stand, each having something 
like an altar, and each once closed by a door of stone 
to make a secret place. Under the blazing sky they 
are furnaces within furnaces, desolations within desola- 
tions, that were long ago abominable with the blood 
of human victims; and they reeked with the burning 


264 The Rulers of the South 


of human flesh that sent up yellow smoke in the cloud- 
less glare of noon, and the stones echoed a wild litany 
of shrieks, while the dark-faced priests looked gravely 
on and gathered back their white robes from the 
flames and brushed the sparks from their black beards. 
There are also a few places like these in Sicily, lonely 
and full of a horror, as though they were cursed. 

That is what the Phoenicians left behind them in the 
lands that were theirs, the Phoenician Carthaginians, 
whose brazen god, set up in Carthage, grasped little 
children in his hot brass hands by a hideous machin- 
ery concealed within, and dropped them one by one 
into the raging fire; the god to whom believers sacri- 
ficed their first-born, the god to whom the boy Han- 
nibal swore that he would hate the Romans while 
he lived. 

One who leaves those hideous ruins behind him, 
and comes to Syracuse, may well feel that he has 
returned to a human world where he can breathe 
again, where he can linger on the steps of the vast 
theatre and almost hear the lovely strains of the 
Alcestis, the voice of Admetus, and the Chorus, and 
the cheerful laugh of Hercules, coming up from the 
wide stage; where he may muse away thoughtful 
hours in the enchanted gardens of the Latomie, recall- 
ing indeed how the unhappy Athenians languished and 
died there in fearful captivity, but remembering how 
many were set free because the magic of Greek verse 


The Romans 265 


was familiar to their lips, and not forgetting the provo- 
cation, when friend and foe were of the same race, 





AMPHITHEATRE AT SYRACUSE 


and the grasping came against the peaceful; where 
he may float upon the silent stream in the papyrus 
shade, and read in a vision the verse and the philos- 


266 The Rulers of the South 


ophy, the history and the wisdom, all written down age 
after age on the wafer-thin slips of fibre so skilfully 
fastened each to each in pages and scrolls, and yet all 
but a small part of what Greece left the world. 

If Hiero could have made history, he would have 
made war impossible and peace beautiful. All he 
could do, he did, and while he lived he made a 
garden, a temple, and an academy of his small king- 
dom, and of Syracuse. Few years of absolute peace 
were given him—=§in all not a quarter of a century — 
for Rome was young, and Carthage was not beyond 
her great prime, and the two powers were like vast 
clouds in the intervals of a tempest, that lower and 
threaten each other from their mountain ranges, and 
are destined to meet in storm and lightning before 
the air can clear. 

Being deprived of her island colonies and of her 
supremacy in the Mediterranean, Carthage turned in 
a new direction in order to retrieve her fortunes 
and replace her loss. Hamilcar Barca had not lost 
the confidence of his fellow-citizens; he had fought 
a brave fight and had withstood the growing force 
of Rome as long as it had been humanly possible. 
His country acknowledged his valour and received 
him with mourning, but not without honour. As 
soon as the injuries she had suffered during a war 
of twenty-two years’ duration could be in part re- 
paired, she intrusted him with a fleet and an army 


The Romans 267 


wherewith to make new conquests. Hamilcar set 
forth and conquered the Spanish seacoast, colonizing 
as he went, and fighting his way on from the Greek 
settlements in the Gulf of Lyons down the coast and 
westward towards the Pillars of Hercules, the fore- 
runner by a thousand years of the great Semitic 
invasion. 

Years passed, and still he fought, and still he won 
new lands, till Carthage had a broad possession in 
Europe, whence it was possible, though not easy, to 
invade Italy from the north. Dying at last, Hamil- 
car left in his son a greater general and a more 
daring spirit than himself. For generations the great 
house of the Barcides had given leaders to the 
Carthaginian army; some had died the death of 
soldiers in the field, some had come home in glory 
and laden with spoil, and more than one had re- 
turned to expiate defeat upon the cross. Neither 
rank nor wealth nor a descent from heroes could 
protect the unfortunate from the wrath of a people 
whose altars ran with human blood, and who could 
throw their first-born to the flames as burnt sacrifices 
to Moloch. In Hannibal were concentrated at once 
the gifts of his own soldierly race and the spirit of 
the Carthaginian people. It was as if, for the final 
struggle now at hand, the whole nation had distilled 
its genius and its energies to their essence in one 
man. From the day when he set forth, at the age 


268 The Rulers of the South 


of twenty-six years, till the final destruction of his 
army at Zama, Hannibal was the soul and life of 
his country; to his enemies his name meant all that 
Carthage was; to his countrymen it stood for all 
they hoped and looked to win in future years. 

Hiero was in extreme old age when the war broke 
out again. We may fairly suppose with Holm that 
his diplomatic spirit was not altogether displeased by 
the news. Before all things he was a Syracusan and 
a patriot, and while he loved peace and used it for 
his country’s good, as few have done, he must have 
looked with apprehension upon the vast predominance 
of Rome. On the other hand, his son Gelon, while 
devotedly attached to his father, differed with him 
altogether in his views of the situation, and would 
gladly have gone over to the Carthaginian side. 
But Hiero, though he probably wished that Rome 
might be held in check by an adversary of nearly 
equal strength, lest Syracuse should lose its inde- 
pendence altogether, was wise enough to see that 
Rome meant civilization, of a kind, whereas Carthage 
carried with her everywhere a strange mixture of 
commercial methods which were altogether selfish 
and injurious to others, and of religious institutions 
which were as terrible as they were barbarous. The 
king’s old age must have been embittered by his 
foreknowledge of what was sure to happen after his 
death, and he appears to have done all in his power 


The Romans 269 


to give stability to the position he had given his 
kingdom. He could not be wholly neutral, any more 
than he could be at heart wholly pleased by Rome’s 
success. 

In the year 219 B.c. Hannibal set forth. The little 
Greek colony of Saguntum, now Murviedro, on the 
Spanish coast, had allied itself with the Romans, and 
Hannibal’s first aggressive act was to take it by siege, 
which was of course a violation of the peace of 242 
B.C. Rome at once sent an embassy to Carthage to 
demand satisfaction; the spokesman gathered his 
cloak in his hands like a sack and held it up to the 
assembled council, saying, that he brought peace or 
war, as those who heard him might choose. They 
answered that the choice should be his, not theirs. 
He shook out the folds of his cloak before them and 
bade them take war, since they would have him choose, 
—war only, war at once, and war to the death. 

It is not within the province of the story of the 
south to tell how Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees and 
marched along the southern coast of France, nor 
how he effected the passage of the Rhone, and 
lost more than half his army before he reached the 
Italian side of the Alps. Once in Italy, the natives 
of the north joined him without hesitation, and he 
drove the Romans southwards step by step, defeat- 
ing them again and again from the river Ticinus 


down to southern Cannze. While he made his famous 


270 The Rulers of the South 


triumphal progress overland, the Romans still held 
Sicily and the islands, and it is amazing that while 
suffering such defeats on the one hand they should 
have been able to drive a Carthaginian fleet from the 
Sicilian shore on the other. But Hiero had received 
notice that the attempt was to be made, and every 
headland of the west was guarded, while the small 
Roman fleet that was in Lilybzeum was provisioned for 
ten days and held in readiness to sail at any moment. 
On a fair moonlight night the Carthaginian ships 
stood in towards the shore, but their white sails be- 
trayed them; from cape to cape the beacon signals 
shot up their flames, and in an hour the Roman fleet 
was under way. When day broke the battle began, 
and the Carthaginians were driven to flight, after losing 
seven of their vessels. Before the news of the victory 
had travelled far, a Roman consul arrived in Messina 
on his way to the rescue and was met by old King 
Hiero, with all his ships of war and with every ex- 
pression of gladness and promise of help. He was 
anxious to impress upon the Romans from the first 
that he meant to stand by them as he had done long 
ago. But when it was known that Lilybeum was 
already safe, the consul sailed across southward and 
fell upon Malta, where he captured a Carthaginian 
force of two thousand men, whom he immediately 
sold as slaves in Sicily. It had been the first inten- 
tion of Rome that he should attack Carthage from 


The Romans | ol 


Lilybeum; but Hannibal had by this time crossed 
the Alps, and the consul was ordered to sail round 
the east coast of Italy as far as Ariminum, now 
Rimini, to land there and march against Hannibal’s 
troops. Even in the next year, 217 B.c.. when Rome 
was losing the disastrous battle of Thrasimene and 
was forced to elect a dictator, a hundred and twenty 
ships were sent to harry the African coast. MHiero 
did more to help the Romans in the second Punic 
war than is commonly remembered. In the same 
year he sent five hundred Cretans and a thousand 
light-armed infantry, and in 216 B.c. a Syracusan 
fleet arrived at Ostia with ambassadors, and seventy- 
five thousand bushels of wheat, fifty thousand of barley," 
a thousand slingers and archers, and a golden statue 
of Victory weighing three hundred and twenty pounds. 
But the present was not of good augury, for on the 
second day of August, in the same year, the Roman 
general Varro lost seventy thousand men in the almost 
incredible defeat at Cannz, far to southward in Apulia, 
where the swift and shallow river Aufidus, the Ofanto 
of our times, sweeps through the Pezza di Sangue, 
which is the ‘field of blood’ to this day, and where 
the rivulet still flows which Hannibal crossed on a 
causeway of corpses. 

Then a Carthaginian fleet sailed up and ravaged the 
coast of Hiero’s dominion, and he appealed for help in 


vain, for the Carthaginian ships were also threatening 


272 The Rulers of the South 


Lilybzeum in the west; but Rome could do nothing, nei- 
ther for him nor for her own preetor in Sicily, and at the 
last it was Hiero, the ever willing, who sent help instead 
of receiving it. But his days were numbered. His son 
Gelon died very suddenly, and he himself not long 
afterwards, in the year 215 B.c., a very old man, 
deeply mourned by his people. 

While Rome was slowly gathering strength after her 
cruel loss, and while Hannibal idled away golden hours 
in the soft Capuan plain, Hiero’s grandson, Hierony- 

- mus, a spoiled boy of fifteen years, began to reign in 

Syracuse, at first under the guidance of fifteen guar- 
dians whom Hiero had appointed in his will, but soon 
flone, through the intrigues of court favourites who 
hoped to attain their ends by declaring him of age. 
Soon the boy began to array himself in purple and to 
wear a crown, and went about with a life-guard in the 
true tyrant fashion, and his boyish displeasure turned 
suddenly to cruelty at the least provocation. So the 
courtiers conspired to kill him, but he was warned of 
his danger, and tortured one of the courtiers to betray 
the rest; who, being very strong and very cunning, 
bore much before he would speak, and then accused the 
only loyal man in the palace, who was not in the con- 
spiracy and was promptly put to death, for he was 
staunch to the Romans, and the king hated him. 

This being done, Hieronymus turned to the Cartha- 


ginians and offered his alliance, promising that he would 


The Romans 203 


help them to conquer Italy, if they would promise him 
all Sicily in return for his help; and Carthage agreed 
to this, as she would have agreed to any terms, without 
the least intention of carrying them out. So Hierony- 
mus began to make war upon the Roman possessions in 
Sicily, not dreaming that the real conspirators were his 
advisors, who had sworn to make Sicily once more a 
republic; and the revolution broke out at Leontini. 
There, as the king rode through a narrow street towards 
the market-place, he was treacherously separated from 
his life-guards by one of themselves, and the conspira- 
tors fell upon him and slew him. But when they had 
done the deed, some proclaimed the republic and others 
took the crown and the blood-stained mantle from the 
boy king’s dead body, and galloped to Syracuse, and 
rode through the quarter of Tyche and through Achra- 
dina, showing these things to the people, who rejoiced 
greatly. And the people went up to the temple of the 
Olympieum and armed themselves with all the splendid 
weapons, both Gallic and Illyrian, which the Romans 
had sent as presents to King Hiero, praying the Olym- 
pian Zeus to bless their swords, that they might fight for 
their freedom, their country, and their gods. On that 
same day they got possession of a part of the island of 
Ortygia, and on the next morning they summoned the 
governor, who was the young king’s uncle by marriage, 
to surrender and acknowledge the republic, and he 
agreed. 


VOL. T 


274 The Rulers of the South 


On the day after that, he solemnly gave up to the 
people the keys of the palace and of the treasure house, 
and the people chose generals as of old, most of whom 
had been among the conspirators; but the governor 
himself received as many votes as any of the rest. He 
therefore planned to make himself master, but was 
betrayed, and the generals murdered him without delay. 
Then suddenly the city was in confusion, for he had 
been popular because he had spoken well and had 
given up the keys at once; and they called upon the 
man who betrayed him to tell all he knew. But this 
fellow accused Harmonia, the sister of the dead king, 
and another false witness appeared and accused all the 
women of the royal house; and the people rose tumult- 
uously to slay them. Two were murdered at once, but 
the third, who was Heraclea, fled with several young 
daughters into the little temple of the palace; and first 
she begged for her life, but seeing that she was to die, 
she piteously pled for her daughters. They slew her by 
the altar, but the maidens were swift of foot and ran 
from the murderers for their lives, and wounded they still 
fled on, through the courts of the palace, shrieking, till at 
last the people hunted them tocorners, one after the other, 
as dogs hunt weak and wounded animals, and they died. 

After this, the people chose new generals, and the 
mercenary soldiers who were there forced them to 
choose two Carthaginian officers; yet suddenly the old 
attachment to Rome made itself felt, and messages 


The Romans 275 


were sent to the Roman general in Sicily, to undo 
what Hieronymus had done and ask a renewal of the 
alliance. But Rome had already seen that although 
Hannibal could not conquer alone, he might be vic- 
torious with the help of Syracuse; and while the 
people hesitated and quarrelled among themselves, a 
Roman fleet of a hundred sail was already in sight off 
Megara, which is Agosta, under one of Rome’s great- 
est generals, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. He was of 
that great Claudian house that gave Rome more sol- 
diers of genius than any other, and from which sprang 
all the Claudian Czesars; he had fought in the first 
Punic war, and in Gaul he had slain with his own 
hand Vindomar the king, and had brought home the 
spoils to the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, a feat accom- 
plished three times only, — by Romulus, by Aulus Cor- 
nelius Cossus, and by himself. 

But no sooner was Marcellus in sight than the Car- 
thaginian fleet appeared from the opposite direction, 
and as the rival forces faced each other on the sea, 
so within Syracuse the opposite factions quarrelled, 
manceuvred, intrigued, and betrayed each other. The 
Carthaginian officers who had been elected generals 
whispered that there was a plot to betray the city 
to the Romans; but as the people armed themselves 
to go and defend the walls, a man who had their 
respect rose up and spoke to them, and convinced 
them that whereas their alliance with one party or 


276 The Rulers 6f the south 


the other was a matter of choice, there could be no 
doubt as to which friendship had proved to be of the 
most value in the past, since the city had been far 
more prosperous under Hiero than under his grandson, 
Hieronymus. The people were inclined to accept this 
view, and agreed to a peace with Rome, which was 
immediately broken when one of the generals, being 
sent with four thousand men to strengthen the garri- 
son of Leontini, crossed the border into the Roman 
possessions on his own responsibility, and proceeded 
to plunder the country. The Romans now defended 
themselves and demanded satisfaction of Syracuse, but 
the Syracusans answered them, saying that they could 
not hold themselves responsible for what was done 
in Leontini. By way of retort Marcellus immediately 
took that city, which had indeed declared itself inde- 
pendent of Syracuse. In the capital the disturb- 
ances continued, and while the Romans endeavoured 
to bring the government to reason, it became more and 
more evident that there was indeed no government at 
all with which to treat. Marcellus sent ambassadors 
at last to the gate with his ultimatum, but they were 
not admitted, and received a scornful message from 
the walls. They might come back, they were told, 
when those who sent them were masters of Syracuse. 

Once more Syracuse was besieged. By sea, Mar- 
cellus blockaded the port and attacked the sea wall 
of Achradina with strange engines, built up from the 


The Romans 27 


decks of his war-ships, with ladders and stages by 
which he hoped to scale the ramparts. The low cliff 
along which the wall was built is nowhere less than 
thirty feet in height to-day; the wall above it could 
scarcely have been less than fifteen or twenty feet 
high, and was probably more. In many places the 
cliffs are ‘steep to,’ as seamen say, and it was easy 
enough to bring the vessels, bows on, to the rocks; it 
was another matter to set up ladders four feet wide, 
hoisted by tackles from the mastheads, and having at 
the top a platform on which four men could stand. 
The situation of these four soldiers cannot have been 
an enviable one at the best, yet the undertaking might 
have succeeded but for the superior skill of the aged 
Archimedes, who had outlived Hiero’s kingdom, and 
the revolutions that had followed its fall, and whose 
marvellous ‘activity and powers of invention kept the 
Romans at bay for many months. As their ladders 
moved up below the walls, and the soldiers began to 
climb up from the decks, vast wooden arms suddenly 
stretched out from the ramparts, dropped huge blocks 
of stone or weights of lead upon the besiegers with 
unerring skill, and immediately disappeared again, 
while not a defender was to be seen. Archimedes 
invented the sort of loop-hole generally known by its 
French name ‘meurtriére,’ and which, being but a 
narrow slit on the outer side, widens rapidly within, 
so that a man may shoot through it in almost any 


278 The Rulers of the South 


direction, at his ease. It soon became evident that the 
city could not be taken from that side. 

By land Appius Claudius had no better success. 
Archimedes invented a sort of automatic iron hook 
which became the terror of the Romans, for it could 
pick up the besiegers from the ground below the 
walls and hurl them down again by means of ma- 
chinery worked from within. Moreover, the ascent to 
the ramparts on the north side was steep, and it was 
easy to throw down masses of stone and other mis- 
siles upon those who attacked. Both generals, after 
having hoped to take the city in a few days, -were 
obliged to content themselves with the old-fashioned 
plan of starving it out by a blockade. Meanwhile, 
the Carthaginians seized Agrigentum, and one of the 
Carthaginian officers in Syracuse succeeded in cross- 
ing the Roman lines with a considerable force, in 
order to join the allies, but was checked by Marcellus. 
Nevertheless, the Carthaginian forces encamped within 
eight miles of Syracuse, while a fleet of fifty-five 
vessels entered the great harbour. 

The struggle began to assume greater dimensions. 
While Hannibal was still lingering in Capua, Rome 
sent the first legion to Panormus, to join and strengthen 
Marcellus. A Roman legion consisted at that time of 
four thousand two hundred men. The Carthaginians 
fancied it would be an easy matter to destroy so 


small a force, and marched to meet it, following 


The Romans 279 


the coast to Messina, and Cape Pelorus; but by a 
rapid movement Appius Claudius was there before 
them, and fearing to give battle they retired into the 
interior, with the intention of seizing as many of the 
Roman cities as possible. A number of these cities 
were indeed inclined to sympathize with the Cartha- 
ginians. Morgantia gave the example by opening her 
gates to Rome’s enemies. Henna, now Castrogiovanni, 
the highest inhabited point of Sicily, and perhaps 
the most inaccessible after Eryx, would have done 
the same; for the inhabitants pressed the Roman 
commander, who had but a small force, to surrender 
at once. He professed himself willing to hear the 
arguments of the assembled people, and bade them 
meet him in the theatre on the following day. They 
did so; he surrounded the place with his little garri- 
son, and with an energy as ruthless as it was prompt, 
he massacred the greater part of the inhabitants on 
the spot. These things took place according to Livy 
in 214 B.c., but Holm places the massacre at Henna 
in the following year. 

The condition of things which had characterized 
more than one previous siege of Syracuse was now 
renewed. The besiegers were unable to make the 
blockade effective, and the city was constantly sup- 
plied with provisions from without. Within, the de- 
fenders were divided into parties. Both in the city 
and in the Roman camp the tedious length of the 


280 The Rulers of the South 


struggle produced a certain indifference and careless- 
ness. The Romans attempted to set on foot a con- 
spiracy among the Syracusans by which they should 
be admitted treacherously. It was betrayed, and the 
leaders were put to death. <A singular accident or 
chance brought about the final result. The question 
of releasing to the Syracusans an important prisoner 
led to a parley which took place near the walls, not 
far from the little harbour of Trogilus. During the 
conversation, which lasted some time, one of the 
Romans who was not concerned in it amused himself 
by counting the courses of stone in the wall of the 
city where it was lowest, owing to some irregularity 
of the ground. A mental calculation of the possible 
height of each course led him to the conclusion that 
the rampart could be reached with fairly long scaling 
ladders at that place. It chanced that the feast of 
Artemis was at hand, which would last three days, 
during which it was a foregone conclusion that the 
greater part of the garrison would be either feasting 
or sleeping off the effects of wine. A _ thousand 
picked men were sent to the spot indicated, after 
midnight, and they got over the wall without diff- 
culty, opened one of the smaller gates, and admitted 
a large number of Romans. At daybreak Marcellus 
was master of Epipole, and standing upon the height 
gazed down for the first time upon the vast and 
beautiful city that lay at his feet; and it is told that 


The Romans 281 


his eyes were filled with tears, though he was an 
old soldier, both for joy over the great deed he had 
done, and for sadness over the ancient glory of the 
city. For he thought of the two Athenian flcets 
that had been sunk by Syracusans, and of the two 
mighty armies, led by two famous generals, who had 
perished there, and of the many wars waged with the 
Carthaginians, and of the great tyrants and kings 
who had ruled, and more than all of Hiero, almost 
the last of them, who had been so staunch a friend 
to the Roman people; and as he thought on all 
these things, he already saw in his imagination the 
most beautiful city of his time in flames, plundered, 
reduced to ashes, levelled with the ground. But he 
yet hoped to avert such fate of war, and he sent 
certain Syracusans who were in his camp to parley 
with the city and advise a surrender. 

The fall of Syracuse is a confused story of plot and 
counterplot, of betrayal, and all possible treachery. 
The beleaguered city took courage at first, when 
Carthaginian troops appeared before the walls, and it 
seemed as if the Romans were themselves to be be- 
sieged ; beaten in each attack, the allies hoped great 
things from a Carthaginian fleet of many hundred sail 
that reached Pachynus, now Capo Passero, and lay 
under the land for shelter during a storm, but as soon 
as the weather moderated the ships sailed on to Italy. 


The situation grew desperate; the malarious fever raged 


282 The Rulers of the South 


in both armies, but made the more victims among the 
Carthaginians, who were encamped in lower land. 
Marcellus had already been obliged to burn the quar- 
ters of Tyche and Neapolis in order to destroy the 
shelter they might have given the enemy in case of an 
attack, and he held Epipolz; so that of the five quar- 
ters, which, as Livy says, were cities in themselves, 
only Achradina and Ortygia still held out. They par- 
leyed, and their citizens plotted; new generals were 
elected, and one was a Spaniard, Mericus, a friend to 
the Romans; he admitted them to Ortygia treacher- 
ously, by night, giving up the portion of the wall in- 
trusted to him. Then Achradina yielded; and at first 
the Roman soldiery could not be controlled, though 
they were bidden to plunder without slaughtering the 
people. Archimedes perished, and many others, but 
Marcellus buried the great engineer with honour and 
ceremony, and to this day imaginative persons point 
out a tomb which they call his, but which is not, for 
Cicero has described the real one most minutely, and 
how he found it overgrown with brambles, but knew it 
by the sphere and cylinder, and by the half of the in- 
scription that remained, and of which he possessed a 
complete copy. 

Syracuse fell in the autumn of 212 B.c., two hundred 
and three years after the first landing of the Athenian 
expedition ; the whole Syracusan territory was annexed 
to the Roman dominions, and the capital became a 


1 
a 
‘ 














The Romans 283 


mere provincial city. Yet the war was not over, and 
though Marcellus took back to Rome as much spoil 
as Carthage herself could have yielded, he was not 


b) 


allowed a triumph, but only an “ovation,” because 
he was obliged to leave his army behind him. In the 
procession, amid many objects of beauty, there was 
carried a painted picture of Syracuse; before the rest 
went the two men who had betrayed the city, and who 
were rewarded with the Roman citizenship and rich 
gifts of land and houses; and eight elephants walked 
in the procession to testify to the victory over the 
Carthaginians. 

As for Agrigentum, which had served the enemy as 
a base of operations since the beginning of the war, it 
was not taken till 210 B.c., and it might have held out 
longer if it had not been betrayed to the Romans by a 
discontented general, a Numidian, whom the Cartha- 
ginian commander had removed from office. He ad- 
mitted the Romans by the sea gate. The citizens who 
had favoured Carthage were beheaded, the rest were all 
sold as slaves. 

So far as Sicily was concerned, the second Punic 
war was over, though eight years elapsed before the 
struggle closed at Zama, in Africa, with the total de- 
struction of Hannibal’s army. 

It has been justly said that the character of the 
Romans became much more cruel after this period, that 


they visited the former defection of the cities on the 


284 The Rulers of the South 


mainland with merciless severity, and ruled Sicily with 
unrelenting hands. With the extension of Roman ter- 


ritory, the conquest of Spain, the universal naval supe- 





A LONELY SPOT ON THE SHORE OF EASTERN CALABRIA 


riority acquired at such fearful cost, came a state of 
things in which the importance of states once indepen- 
dent was reduced to the smallest proportions, and their 
wealth was drained to feed Rome’s enormous hunger. 


The Romans 285 


The Sicilians complained, many Syracusans came to 
Rome to make representations to the Senate; they 
compared Marcellus to the destroying fires of Etna and 
to the terrors of the Straits, of Scylla, Charybdis, and 
the tidal currents; they not only accused him, they 
calumniated him, and they told false tales of pretended 
readiness to deliver Syracuse to him, saying that he 
had wished to take their city by force, out of vanity, 
and had preferred to conquer it by the treachery of a 
coppersmith and a Spaniard, rather than to receive its 
willing submission, in order to slake his thirst for blood 
and satisfy his greed for booty, and that he had treated 
Leontini with unexampled cruelty at the very outset of 
the war; they concluded by demanding the restitution 
of their property, so far as any of it still existed. They 
had friends among the Romans, men who envied Mar- 
cellus his glory and hoped much for themselves, and 
who spoke against him in the Senate; but they ob- 
tained nothing, for Syracuse was in Rome’s possession 
now; Rome had got it by the hand of her great gen- 
eral, and what she once held she kept. Failing in 
their mission, the subtle Greeks turned suddenly to 
flattery and fawning, and lest worse should befall them 
thereafter, they chose Marcellus to be their especial 
patron and protector. 

In order to understand what followed, —the condition 
of the south after its final conquest by Rome, the wars 
of the insurgent slaves, and the misfortunes to which 


286 The Rulers of the South 


Sicily was subjected under the przetorship of Verres, — 
it is necessary to have at least a superficial idea of 
the machinery by which Rome governed her first prov- 
ince, as well as those which she subsequently acquired. 
The principle of this government was of the simplest 
description, for it consisted in placing the whole power 
in the hands of a trusted servant of the state, who 
could be held accountable for his acts only to the 
Roman Senate, and who possessed in his province 
the powers of a consul, which he could practically 
extend to the omnipotence of a dictator. This official, 
after the system assumed its permanent form, was in 
fact a man who had served his year as pretor in 
the city, and then obtained the office denominated pro- 
pretor of a province by lot. The term of this service 
was supposed to be a year, but it could be prolonged 
by the Senate, and during its duration he who obtained 
it was commander-in-chief of all the troops in the 
province, with powers of life and death over all per- 
sons residing there, whether Roman citizens or not. 
He combined in his own person a number of offices 
which in Rome were held by separate individuals, he 
was the supreme judge, and was superior to all 
courts. The home government indeed limited his 
actions in certain ways. He was required to abstain 
rigorously from all transactions which could affect his 
personal interests; he was forbidden to buy slaves in 


his province, excepting to replace such as died in 


The Romans 287 


service; he was not to engage in any financial opera- 
tions on his own account; and finally, he was neither 
allowed to marry a woman of the province nor to 
take his own wife with him. It will be seen that 
everything was interdicted to him which could be 
supposed to influence his judgment in any way. As 
in the United States at the present time, it was in- 
tended that the constant replacing of one official by 
another should make impossible that corruption which 
is often the result of leaving the same person to 
exercise the same function in the same place for 
many years together. As for his pay and allowances, 
the former was considerable and, according to Cicero’s 
reckoning, may be estimated at more than sixty thou- 
sand pounds sterling of modern money, of which the 
purchasing power was then at least two and a half 
times as great as itis now. The allowances consisted 
in a sum of public money for his original outfit, in a 
residence which the province was bound to provide 
_ for him, and in free entertainment for himself and his 
large retinue during all his official journeys. It is 
unnecessary to speak of his subordinates in detail. 
The second person in the province was the questor 
or treasurer, who presided over the collection of rev- 
enue and the provincial budget, and who was sup- 
posed to be co-responsible with the pretor for the 
manner in which the public money was expended. 
The pretor in office was surrounded by a court of 


288 The Rulers of the South 


considerable state. Three distinguished citizens, termed 
Legates of the Roman people, were named by the 
Senate to accompany him, and to them he could dele- 
gate his civil authority, but not the power of life and 
death. He had of course a military guard, and he 
was allowed to choose at his pleasure a number of 
young men of rank who were commonly called his 
pretorian cohort, and who under his direction fitted 
themselves for a political career. Besides these he 
had a small army of scribes and clerks and other 
assistants, designated collectively his apparitors; he 
also had six lictors and a staff of heralds, physicians, 
augurs, and interpreters. 

After the Punic wars a considerable number of 
Roman citizens resided in Sicily and occupied them- 
selves in commerce, farming, and the lucrative busi- 
ness of undertaking government contracts. In the 
case of a bad pretor, these citizens were as much at 
his mercy, in fact, as the mere provincials, but in 
theory they were protected by their right of appeal- 
ing to the Roman people, a right not always derisory. 
It is remarkable, however, that in times of peace 
Sicily was governed without any outward show of 
power, without the presence of any large body of 
soldiery, without garrisoned towns as strongholds in 
case of insurrection, and was practically kept in sub- 
jection merely by the fear of Rome. Of modern 
nations England alone seems able to inspire a similar 


respect in some of her possessions. 


The Romans 289 


The first care of the Romans, after the fall of 
Syracuse and before the overthrow of Carthage, was 
to develop in Sicily those great resources of agri- 
culture by means of which Hiero had been able to 
render them such signal service, and the first przetors 
made constant journeys through the length and breadth 
of the island in order to assure themselves that the 
cultivation of corn and other cereals was conducted 
with energy and good judgment. It was from this 
time that Sicily began to be called the granary of 
Rome. Moreover, until the battle of Zama, the 
Romans must have felt that there was an element 
of insecurity, if not of instability, in their domination, 
against which it was necessary to guard themselves 
with the utmost foresight. They endeavoured also to 
strengthen themselves by recalling those Greeks who 
had fled during the long wars, and in 208 B.c., dur- 
ing the games of the one hundred and forty-third 
Olympiad, they caused an announcement to be made 
to the effect that if these exiles would return, their 
former possessions should be given back to them. 
It appears that the proposition was accepted. 

Before the state of Sicily became finally settled, 
Scipio made it the base of his operations against 
Africa. It is somewhat hard to understand that 
Hannibal should have been able to remain in Italy, 
treating a part of the south as a conquered country, 
long after all Sicily was in the hands of the Romans, 


VOL. I U 


290 The Rulers of the South 


and that Scipio should have had some difficulty in 
obtaining permission to make an expedition against 
Carthage; but the reader who desires an explanation 
of these facts can find it in any history. Hannibal 
might have found it at one time more difficult to 
retire from Italy than to remain where he was, and 
if there was still any uncertainty about the fate of 
the great island, it was to be decided in battles 
fought elsewhere. ‘To the last, though little concerned 
in the fighting, Sicily was made to contribute the 
greatest part of the provisions necessary for the 
expedition. Before attempting it, Scipio collected 
from all the Sicilian coast merchant vessels for trans- 
ports, and loaded them with cargoes of provisions. 
The fleet and army were provided with cooked food 
sufficient for a fortnight, and corn and other pro- 
visions for a month longer, and with fresh water for 
forty-five days. There were forty ships of war and 
four hundred transports collected to sail from the 
harbour of Lilybeum. The city and harbour were 
crowded to overflowing, for persons of all conditions 
had flocked thither from other parts of the island to 
see the departure of the fleet. Among the soldiers 
were many who had been in the great defeat of 
Cannz, and who trusted that under Scipio’s general- 
ship they might redeem their reputation. Yet the 
utmost order was maintained throughout the prepara- 
tions, and the most strict commands were issued with 


The Romans 291 


a view to keeping the fleet together during the 
passage. The squadrons were to sail in a regular 
order by day and by night, and lights were to be 
carried to distinguish the classes of vessels from one 
another; one light for a war-ship, two for a transport, 
and three for the admiral’s own vessel. When all 
was ready, at daybreak on the day of departure, 
silence was imposed upon the vast assembly by a 
herald, and Scipio, after sacrificing upon his own 
ship in the sight of all, addressed a solemn prayer 
for victory to the gods, and cast the remains of the 
victims into the sea. The trumpet sounded the final 
signal, and all the four hundred and forty vessels set 
sail with a fair wind. 

This was in 202 B.c.; fifty-six years later the city 
of Carthage was finally destroyed, after a siege that 
lasted three years, during which the Romans built a 
stone wall across the harbour, and ultimately walled 
in the doomed city. Such resistance shows well 
enough that even the defeat at Zama had not de- 
stroyed the resources nor the vitality of the great 
Phoenician nation. 

During the time which intervened between the two 
wars, the south was going through those slow changes 
which led to the wars of the revolted slaves, from the 
moral effect of which Sicily never altogether recovered, 
and which were the first beginning of a certain law- 
lessness among the country population which is felt at 


292 The Rulers of the South 


the present day. I am not aware that any writer has 
taken this point of view, but it is a reasonable one, 
nevertheless. Reviewing the whole previous history of 
the island, it is clear that until the Roman conquest 
was completed, the Sicilians had never been united. 
Not only had the Phoenician element been in opposition 
and often at war with the Greek, but both had been, 
from time to time, at odds with the Sicelians, who, 
though hellenized like the Sicilian Phoenicians, pre- 
served, like them, the prejudices and characteristics of a 
distinct race. Besides these there were the Mamertines, 
the descendants of a wild band of discharged mercena- 
ries, who were responsible for the outbreak of the first 
Punic war, and who would not naturally live on good 
terms with the other three divisions of the population. 
All these were made one by force under the Roman 
domination, and the condition of a common subjection 
united all those who did not profit by it in that common 
hatred of authority which is the mainspring of the 
Mafia to-day. It is hardly necessary to say that the 
great majority of those who were oppressed were 
slaves, and that the numbers were constantly increasing 
at a time when the slave trade was immensely profit- 
able. In Delos, the central- slave’ marketeorPethe 
fEgean, ten thousand slaves were bought and sold 
in a single day. They were collected from all the 
shores of the Mediterranean, and often from far up 


the interior of Africa, Pirate vessels of all sorts 


The Romans 293 


engaged in the business, as being easier under most 
circumstances than robbery on the high seas, besides 
being perfectly legal. 

It seems impossible to form an estimate of the 
number of slaves owned in Sicily, still less in Italy, at 
any one time. Holm, who has collected information 
from every quarter and has probably left no source 
unexplored, says that there were Carthaginians who 
owned as many as twenty thousand slaves. A freed- 
man of Augustus, whose property was reduced, left 
over four thousand at his death. The usual authorities 
state that two hundred were a fair number for an 
ordinary citizen. There were, of course, a good many 
small farmers in the interior of Sicily, who owned very 
few, and worked in the fields themselves; but the 
general tendency was towards extensive culture as con- 
trasted with intensive culture, and towards those very 
large holdings which have continued to exist in the 
south to the present day. The Nelson property in 
Sicily, inherited by Lord Bridport, Duke of Bronte, 
is now eighty miles round, and there were doubtless 
even larger estates under the Romans, worked altogether 
by slaves, at a time when there were no free tenant 
farmers. It is safe, I think, to assume that, at the 
very least, two-thirds of the whole population were 
slaves at the time of the slave wars. 

No one can suppose for a moment that any moral 
authority could control such a body of bondsmen, 


294 The Rulers of the South 


many of whom were doubtless rough men of great 
strength and savage instincts, who feared nothing but 
pain and starvation, and respected nothing but the 
master’s display of force. We do not know on what 
principle they were selected for different occupations, 
but it is certain that those who suffered most were 
ordinary farm labourers, who worked in irons under 
ruthless overseers, receiving a pound of barley or wheat 
daily, with a little oil and salt, for their fare, and being 
lodged in wretched quarters, often under ground. In 
Rome, only runaways were branded like thieves, on the 
principle that in trying to escape they were stealing 
themselves from their masters; but in Sicily all were 
branded alike with their owner’s marks, like cattle. 
It is certain, however, that the slaves who herded 
cattle were mounted, and armed for the defence of 
herds and flocks, like the mounted herdsmen of the 
present time in the Roman Campagna; and to this day 
the southern herdsman invariably carries a small axe, 
a very dangerous weapon nearly of the size and model 
of an Indian tomahawk. It is a privilege peculiar to 
him, in a country where it is a punishable offence for 
a labourer to carry a pointed knife. 

Holm argues acutely that the only possible way in 
which a slave could improve his condition was by turn- 
ing highwayman. He had no other choice, since, being 
branded in the face, he could not possibly pass for a 
freeman anywhere in the known world at that time. 


The Romans 295 


It is a singular fact that modern Sicilians of the lower 
classes, with whom I have talked long and familiarly, 
attribute the ineradicable tendency to brigandage to 
the oppression of the large landholders, saying in 
Holm’s own words that when the peasant can no 
longer live he has no choice but to turn robber. This 
is of course not universally true, but it indicates a 
surprising duration of the same conditions under widely 
different institutions. Between the state of the slave 
in the Roman times and that of the legally oppressed 
small tenant of to-day there is not much to choose, in 
theory; in practice, there is the difference between the 
lash and the law. — 

Now in ancient Sicily a singular position of affairs 
was soon reached. Slaves ran away and formed 
bands of brigands, but they very naturally attacked 
the weak and almost defenceless small free farmers 
and left the rich and powerful unmolested. Many of 
the runaways were slaves of Roman knights, and the 
authorities let them alone, because if any one but the 
owner punished a slave, the owner could bring an 
action to recover damages for a personal injury. On 
the other hand, when the brigands had murdered a 
small farmer and plundered his land, they immediately 
disappeared into the mountains, and the nearest rich 
man found it convenient to appropriate the ownerless 
property ; so that there may even have been an under- 
standing between the great landlords and the brigands, 


296 The Rulers of the South 


such as has been seen in Sicily in our own times, 
between the bandits and small landlords, for the 
purpose of plundering the rich. 





IN CASTROGIOVANNI TO-DAY 


The first outbreak of the first slave insurrection had 
its origin in Henna, now Castrogiovanni, which rises 
from the great valley of the interior like a volcano, 
opposite its twin height, Calascibetta. There, in a pal- 
ace that was half a stronghold, dwelt a rich man called 


The Romans 297 


Damophilus with his wife Megallis. Their great estates 
lay far below, cultivated by thousands of slaves, and 
in the city there were others perhaps as rich and pow- 
erful as themselves. These two, however, were known 
throughout the country for the splendour of the state 
they kept and the barbarous cruelty with which they 
treated their human chattels. They had one daughter, 
their only child, of a temper very different from 
theirs, for she was kind and gentle. Now among the 
slaves of another master in Henna there was one 
Eunus, a Syrian of some education and skilled in the 
tricks of Oriental magic. It is hard to judge of the 
man’s character from the account Diodorus has left us. 
Among the many oppressed he was an enthusiast for 
liberty, where all were ignorant he possessed a little 
learning, where there was no hope he pointed to a far- 
off glimmer of freedom. To his companions he seemed 
half a god, to his masters he appeared to be a clever 
conjurer; he had learned the secret of eating fire and 
blowing it from his mouth, and among his fellow- 
slaves he enhanced the solemnity of his utterances by 
this means, and they listened with reverence and awe 
to prophecies that were accompanied by such a portent. 
The great men of Henna, when they feasted in com- 
pany, used to send for him and make him exhibit 
his skill; and with an earnestness which amused them 
and convinced the slaves who were present in the hall, 


he used to prophesy amidst a shower of sparks that he 


298 The Rulers of the South 


should one day be king. Then the guests laughed and 
jestingly implored that he would treat them graciously 
when he should come to his kingdom; and he answered 
with much dignity that he would show mercy to all 
present. So they, being well pleased, gave him choice 
titbits from the feast and bade him remember there- 
after that they were his friends. 

_ At this time, when he had attained to a great repu- 
tation, the suffering slaves of Damophilus and Megallis 
came to him secretly and inquired whether the gods 
would be gracious to them if they revolted. Eunus 
consulted the oracles of the future for them, and bade 
them revolt at once. In an incredibly short time four 
hundred slaves under the command of the fire-eating 
soothsayer set the whole city in an uproar; thousands 
of slaves joined them as soon as their intentions were 
understood, and before night the streets of Henna ran 
with the blood of the slave-owners, of their wives and 
of their children. For the rabble spared no living 
thing, and when Damophilus and his wife were found 
in one of their country houses, for the revolt had 
begun in their absence, a band of slaves brought them 
with their hands bound behind them into the city 
and led them to the theatre to be judged. The master 
died an easy death, for while he was eloquently plead- 
ing his own cause two of his own slaves sprang upon 
him with swords, and as the one stabbed him to the 
heart the other struck off his head at a blow. But the 


The Romans 299 


lady Megallis was given over to her own female slaves, 
and they tortured her as she had tortured them and 
worse, and when there was little life left in her they 
threw her, still breathing, from the cliff. Her daughter 
was not hurt. These things being done to the full 
satisfaction of the multitude, the word of Eunus was 
fulfilled, for they elected him forthwith to be their 
king. His first royal act was to order a general 
massacre of slave-owners, and with his own hand he 
slew his own masters; but, strange to say, he kept his 
word to those who, when guests at their table, had 
treated him kindly. The only free men who were 
spared in Henna were the armourers, whose skill was 
needed in order to supply the insurgents with weapons, 
and who were now themselves made slaves. Eunus 
took the title of Antiochus, and in three days raised 
a nondescript force of. six thousand men, armed chiefly 
with slings, axes, scythes, skewers, and pointed staves 
hardened in the fire. 

It has already been said that the Roman power was 
maintained in the island more by the fear of Rome’s 
name than by the presence of any military force. The 
Sicilian freemen had well-nigh forgotten the use of 
arms in the long peace, there were few troops in the 
island, and these were stationed at such places as 
Lilybeum, Panormus, and Messina. The Sicilians 
were taken by surprise, and before they could organize 
any means of defence the rising had assumed the 


300 The Rulers of the South 


most dangerous proportions. A Cilician named Cleo, 
who had been a highway robber in his home, but was 


engaged in horse-breeding in Sicily, was attracted by 





CALASCIBETTA AT SUNSET 


the prospect of plunder, raised five thousand men as 
well disposed as himself, in the neighbourhood of 
Agrigentum, and proceeded to join forces with Eunus, 


The Romans 301 


leaving a broad tract of destruction behind him as he 
went up the interior. The junction was effected before 
the preetor of the island was able to get together a 
force of eight thousand men. The slave army met 
him, twenty thousand strong, and he was defeated. 
Soon afterwards no less than two hundred thousand 
slaves were in arms. 

The indifference of the great landholders to the 
safety of the small free farmers, whose little posses- 
sions they coveted, has been already explained. It had 
produced its natural result, and the free farmers soon 
saw that if they joined themselves to the insurgent 
slaves they could have ample revenge. They rose in 
great numbers, and the insurrection speedily became a 
general revolution of poverty against wealth. As often 
happens in such cases, this meant anarchy. The poor 
freemen of the city, wholly ignorant of the condition 
of the small farmers, whom the slaves regarded as their 
allies, plundered them wholesale, and the result was a 
sort of general and indiscriminate guerilla warfare. 

It was evident that the Roman garrison of Sicily 
was totally unable to cope with the difficulty; more- 
over, slaves revolted at the same time in Greece and 
Macedonia and in other places; it was said that a slave 
conspiracy was on foot in Rome itself. 

This state of things had already lasted the greater 
part of six years before the Romans succeeded in 


gaining a decided advantage. Publius Rupilius, the 


302 The Rulers of the South 


consul in 132 B.c., who had begun life himself as a tax- 
gatherer in Sicily, finally quelled the first outbreak. He 
besieged the slaves in Tauromenium, and reduced them 
to such straits that they devoured their women and 
children, and at last began to eat each other. Their 
commander was a certain Comanus, a brother of Cleo, 
the horse-breeder. Slavelike, he abandoned his com- 
rades and escaped from the city, but was taken and 
brought before the consul. Being asked questions 
about the state of the city, he bent down, drawing his 
cloak over his head as if to shade his eyes and collect 
his thoughts, and then, for he was a very strong man, 
he set his hand to his throat and crushed his windpipe 
in his own grip, so that he fell dead at the consul’s 
feet. Soon afterwards the city was betrayed to the 
Romans by a Syrian, and the greater part of the slaves 
were hurled from the cliff. Last of all Cleo and _ 
Eunus retired to the impregnable city of Henna, where 
the outbreak had begun. Being almost starved to 
despair Cleo had the courage to attack the Romans 
in the open, but he was beaten and the city surren- 
dered. Untold thousands of slaves were massacred, 
but Eunus escaped with less than a thousand men only 
to be hunted down by the Romans at last. His com- 
panions killed each other; but Eunus himself, his cook, 
his baker, his bath servant, and his jester, were taken 
alive by the Romans, and it is said that Eunus was 
condemned to be bitten to death by vermin in a dun- 


geon. So ended the first slave war. 


The Romans 303 


The wars of the slaves in Sicily were not isolated 
attempts to obtain freedom, to be referred to local 
causes only. Whether any understanding existed be- 
tween the oppressed classes throughout Rome’s domin- 
ions, to bring about a general revolution, it is impossible 
to determine. In times of insurrection and change, it 
often seems as if many movements were directed by 
one leader, when there is, in fact, no leader at all, but 
when the natural understanding in different parts of 
the world has been produced by the spreading of an 
idea which brings about similar results in similar con- 
ditions. The same thing happens in the domain of 
science. Newton, Leibnitz, and Descartes invented 
almost simultaneously, but in very different ways, the 
method which goes by the name of the Differential 
Calculus. Great minds reach similar conclusions in 
similar circumstances; the mind of a people may be 
considered to be a great mind made up of millions of 
units, almost all insignificant, if taken separately, but 
superlatively logical when acting as a whole. If this 
were not true, representative government would be 
nothing but the rule of ignorance or, at best, of medi- 
ocrity. But the instinct of a nation is almost always 
as unerringly logical as the instinct of a wild animal. 
It is not necessary to suppose that between the years 
139 B.c. and 99 B.c. there was any general and secret 
understanding by which the slaves of the Romans 


agreed to rebel at the same time, from Asia Minor to 


304 The Rulers of the South 


Sicily, while the Gracchi attempted to overthrow the 
aristocracy in Rome itself. 

On the other hand, those who have lived in India 
and the far East know how fast news travels among the 
people in countries where there is either no telegraph 
at all, or where it is certainly not at the service of the 
agricultural population. I recollect that when Sir 
Louis Cavagnari was murdered in Kabul, in 1870, 
the news was told in the bazaar at Allahabad before 
the English authorities received it by the telegraph, 
which then covered more than half the whole distance 
between the two places. The conditions in the out- 
lying parts of the Roman possessions were more like 
those of India than is generally realized, and it should 
not surprise any one to learn that news often travelled 
from point to point at the rate of several hundred miles 
a day. Such a possibility implies a much more rapid 
exchange of ideas than might at first be expected, and 
it must not be forgotten, in the case of the slaves, that 
they had relatives and friends in Asia, in Africa, and 
in Spain, from whom they had been forcibly carried off 
into servitude, and who must have used every means 
which affection could suggest for communicating with 
them. Merchants came and went in their ships, 
soldiers were ordered to different provinces, and back 
again, slaves themselves accompanied their Roman 
masters on long journeys, and took messages to 
the friends of their fellow-slaves, and brought back 


The Romans 305 


news on their return. Thus there was constant com- 
munication between the oppressed classes from one 
end of the Roman dominions to the other, and a con- 
stant sympathy between them was maintained thereby, 
which could not fail to manifest itself sooner or later 
in more or less simultaneous action. 

It seems credible, too, that something of the spirit 
of the Pythagorean brotherhoods may have survived, 
though the majority of the slaves probably never heard 
of the philosopher himself; and that they may have 
used signs and may have had peculiar customs by 
which they recognized each other. ‘Thieves’ slang’ 
still serves thieves as a certain means of recognition, 
and every one who has lived in Sicily knows that 
the ‘Mafiusi’ use special names for a number of 
familiar objects and articles of daily use. 

It is at all events certain that the movement of the 
slaves was very extensive throughout the Roman world, 
and that they displayed tactics which, though not of 
the highest order, imply the existence of organization. 
This was notably the case during the second slave war 
in Sicily. Before the first was over, and when Henna 
was still in the hands of the insurgents, an outbreak 
took place in Asia Minor which may be regarded as 
more or less accidental, for it was not begun by the 
slaves themselves. Attalus, king of Pergamus, had 
bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people by will. 
His son, considering himself deeply wronged, attempted 


VOL aL x 


306 The Rulers of the South 


to rouse the nobles to arevolution, and failing to do so, 
appealed to the slaves and the poor, promising them 
freedom and riches. He was, of course, conquered by 
the Romans. The insurrection of Vettius in Campania 
in 104 B.c. seems to have been more closely connected 
with the real slave movement. Vettius was a Roman 
knight of some wealth, living on his estates in the south. 
In an evil hour he was attracted by a beautiful slave 
girl, and what was at first the mere caprice of an idle 
country gentleman grew by degrees into one of those 
uncontrollable passions that breed in the feverish air 
of the south. The girl was faithfully devoted to her 
slave people, and dreamt of winning their liberty. Her 
lover might have given his own bondsmen freedom 
for her sake, but she wanted more than that, and 
she began to persuade him that the slaves of Italy 
would make him their king if he would lead them, and 
face the Romans if he would fight with them, and that 
the empire of the world was almost within his grasp. 
In the privacy of his Campanian villa, absolute lord 
of all he saw, Vettius listened to the lovely Greek girl 
day after day, and he watched the sturdy slaves going 
about their work, and he saw that they would make 
good soldiers, who would fight to the last breath for 
their liberty. Secluded from the world, everything 
seemed possible, and all that he heard by the voice 
he loved seemed sure, for there was no one to answer 


the woman. So he got together a great quantity of 


The Romans 307 


arms and gave them to his slaves, bidding them free 
their fellows throughout Italy; and they made him 
their king. But he appointed one of them, a Greek 
called Apollonius, to be his general, and this dastard 
betrayed him to the Romans, and he slew himself 
rather than fall into their hands. | 

About the same time the Roman senate was actually 
taking steps to check the slave trade and to restore to | 
liberty a number of persons then in slavery. It was 
decreed unlawful to make a slave of any free man or 
woman belonging to an allied nation, and whenever the 
case should arise, the governors of the provinces were 
ordered to set such persons free. Ina short time more 
than eight hundred Sicilian slaves obtained their free- 
dom under this law, and it was natural that many 
thousands should claim the same advantage, whether 
they had a legal right to it or not. The measure had 
been passed too hastily, and the result was that it 
seemed necessary to suspend it for a time. . An im- 
mense number of slaves who had presented themselves 
in the hope of being emancipated were ordered to 
return to their masters. They knew what awaited 
them if they obeyed, and they took sanctuary in the 
sacred grove of the mysterious Palici, where they were 
protected as in a city of refuge by the immemorial 
tradition of sanctity which clung to the place. There, 
from hot, still pools, the intermittent springs send up 
from time to time high jets of steam and boiling mud, 


308 The Rulers of the South 


and then again these sink down and the froth subsides 
in the earthy cauldron and all is very still; for thus it 
pleased the twin gods to manifest their power. ‘These 
pools are near the place now called Palagonia. 

It is believed that from their safe retreat the slaves 
treated with their masters, in order that they might be 
taken back without suffering punishment for their 
attempt to gain freedom; but that, with the true Greek 
instinct for treachery, they agreed among themselves in 
a conspiracy to rise against their owners at a certain 
time. And so they did; for not long afterwards the 
slaves of two landholders in Halicyz, which is now 
Salemi, murdered their masters in their sleep, and rous- 
ing the slaves of neighbouring farms got together a 
force of two hundred and fortified themselves on a pre- 
cipitous height to await events. Presumably, they ex- 
pected news of other risings in the neighbourhood, but 
they had either anticipated the time agreed upon, or 
their friends lacked courage, for none stirred. The 
preetor appeared with a body of soldiers to storm the 
place, but finding it stronger than he had expected, he 
bought the services of a condemned criminal who had 
escaped justice and turned bandit, and this man was | 
received in a friendly way by the slaves, with his troop 
of brigands, and he immediately betrayed them. The 
runaways fought to the death, and those who survived 
the combat that ensued threw themselves over the 


precipice rather than be taken alive. 


The Romans 309 


The general rising took place a short time afterwards. 
Again a number of slaves murdered their master, 
eighty against one man; and in a few days two thou- 
sand were under arms. They beat a detachment of 
Roman infantry in the first engagement, and before 
long their numbers swelled to twenty thousand foot and 
two thousand horse, the latter being, of course, the 
armed and mounted herdsmen of the great slave- 
owners. Their leader was one Salvius, a soothsayer, 
and he promptly attacked the strong place, Morgantia, 
now Giardinelli, on the southern slope of Monte Judica, 
overlooking the great Catanian plain. He promised 
freedom to the slaves within if they would join him; 
but their masters promised it to them, also, and so out- 
tempted the tempters, for the slaves in the city rightly 
judged that there would be time enough to run away if 
their masters did not keep the promise made, as indeed 
happened afterwards, when the siege was raised and the 
besiegers retired again to the groves of the Palici. 

But meanwhile another leader had arisen in the 
west, had gathered ten thousand men, and attacked 
Lilybeeum. He was the steward of a great estate, an 
astrologer, and a man of unquestionable courage and 
ready resource. Before Lilybeeum he failed, of course, 
and he suffered a reverse when he withdrew from the 
siege; but still he gathered more and more followers, 
and many of the poor freemen came into his camp, till 
at last he exchanged embassies with Salvius, who had 


310 The Rulers of the South 


proclaimed himself king under the name of Trypho, 
and presently the two joined forces in a place called 
Triocala, the ‘thrice fair.’ But there King Trypho 
thought it wiser to throw King Athenio into prison and 
to rule alone, and he built a wall round the town, with 
a moat, and erected a little palace, and wore purple, 
and was accompanied by lictors. All these things hap- 
pened in 104 B.c. 

It was not until the following year that the Romans 
sent an army to attack the slave capital, and the 
magnitude of the force shows what was thought of 
the insurrection in Rome. It consisted of fourteen 
thousand Romans and Italians with two thousand 
Bithynians, Thessalians, Lucanians, and others. King 
Trypho now set King Athenio at liberty; what is 
more surprising is that Athenio does not seem to 
have resented his long imprisonment. He advised 
meeting the Romans in open battle, and charging at 
the head of two hundred horsemen he rode like a 
madman through the Roman ranks, leaving a _ broad 
river of blood where he had passed. In the desperate 
charge he was wounded in many places and fell at 
last, and when the shout went up that he was dead, 
the slave army fled in dismay. Yet the Romans did 
not pursue them, and they had time to retire upon 
Triocala, when it was found that Athenio was still 
alive. By skill, by bribery, and by actual fighting he 
kept the Romans off, and when Trypho died in the 


The Romans | 311 


following year, Athenio became the sole king of the 
slaves in his stead. 

He now almost got possession of Sicily and ravaged 
the country in all directions, besieging cities and 
making himself master of more than one strong 
place. The apparently inexplicable inactivity of one 
preetor after another was accounted for well enough 
in Rome on the simple theory that each was bribed 
in succession by Athenio, and each was accordingly 
exiled at the end of his term of office; and when at 
last a man was found in the Consul Manlhus Aquillius, 
the power of the slaves had grown so great that it 
required two years of preparation, and hard fighting, 
to crush it out of existence. 

The end of Athenio was as romantic as his short 
and brilliant career had been. In the final battle 
which decided his fate he exposed his life with the 
recklessness of a man who stakes a kingdom on every 
sword-thrust. On the other side Aquillius fought no 
less bravely for a baser motive; he had refused 
bribes, most probably, where his predecessor had 
accepted them, but only in order that by a complete 
victory he might have better opportunities of enrich- 
ing himself, for he was the man into whose all-greedy 
mouth Mithridates is said at last to have poured 
molten gold, so that he died. Nevertheless, he fought 
like a brave man, and in the battle he met Athenio 
face to face; they fought one another hand to hand, 


312 The, Rulersvot thes south 


the Roman for gold, the Greek for freedom, while 
men looked on and held their breath. Then the 
Greek wounded the Roman in the breast, so that he 
had great scars to show long afterwards, when he 
was accused; but the Roman killed the Greek and 
got the victory. 

After that he reduced the slaves’ remaining strong- 
holds one by one, and when the last thousand men 
surrendered on condition that their lives should be 
spared, Aquillius sent them all to Rome, to fight with 
wild beasts in the arena; but there, scorning to die 
the death of men condemned, they slew each other 
by the altars of the circus with the weapons that 
had been given them for the fight, and when they 
were all dead their leader Satyrus took his own life. 
Thus ended the great struggles for freedom which 
were fought by the slaves in Sicily during the forty 
years between 139 B.c. and 99 B.c., that is to say 
during more than a generation of men born in slav- 
ery, the sons and grandsons of those who first rose 
against the Roman oppression under Eunus the con- 
jurer and soothsayer. 

They were not all heroes; their revolutions gen- 
erally began with treacherous murders of men asleep 
and grew by monstrous and wholesale plunder; their 
first leader died a coward’s death, and mioreminan 
once they all turned and fled in battle before the 
Romans’ orderly advance. Yet they deserve the sym- 


The Romans e1R 


pathy of mankind for the sufferings that made them 
rebel, and for the courage many of them showed 
when their end was at hand. They had been trained 
to bear shackles, not arms, to receive blows, not to 
deal them, to think as convicts think, not as free- 
men; the armed overseer was their daily companion 
and his whip was familiar with their flesh; it was 
no wonder that they stabbed in the dark what was 
too strong for them by daylight, and conspired to 
murder those whom they were at first too weak to 
fight. If anything can make assassination pardon- 
able it is the condition of the oppressed slave; and 
in the south, though there were thousands of rough 
Africans who tilled the soil in chains, there were 
many, too, who belonged to quite another race and 
class, Greeks from Asia Minor, skilled in every art, 
delicately trained and intellectually by far the supe- 
riors of men whose property they had become by the 
evil violence of pirates and robbers, or by the un- 
happy chances of disastrous war; and with them 
were many of their women, their sisters, their wives, 
and their daughters, of free blood and of good line- 
age, reduced with themselves to the social rank of 
items in an inventory, and living at the best in the 
mean condition of favourite animals. The provoca- 
tion to murder must have been indeed more than a 
man could bear; and in the end many died very 
bravely, for men who are ready to throw themselves 


314 The Rulers of the South 


from cliffs and precipices rather than be taken alive 
desire freedom more than they dread death, even 
though it be out of fear of living, and in the scale of 
bravery the names of Athenio and Satyrus may stand 
as high as many that are better remembered. 

It 18 related that after the end of the vslaverwar. 
the enormous number of unburied bodies and the 
vast quantities of blood that had moistened the ground 
produced a plague of grasshoppers that ravaged the 
whole country. Holm considers this to be a somewhat 
fabulous tale, but says that it gives a good idea of the 
condition of Sicily. Entomologists may determine its 
possibility or explain what insect was taken for a 
grasshopper; it is at least certain that agriculture was 
temporarily checked by some visitation of the kind, 
which may well have had its origin in the frightful 
condition of many battlefields, where no attempt had 
been made to bury the dead. 

Holm has given his opinion of the state of the 
island and of the results of the slave war in a passage 
which I cannot refrain from translating, for no his- 
torian has more carefully weighed the evidence of 
history nor formed upon it opinions which seem more 
just. 

“Nevertheless,” he writes, “it may justly be said 
that the island had, on the whole, profited by the 
slave wars. Sicily was on the high road to become the 
mere pastureland of a few great men, as was already 


The Romans 215 


the case with many provinces of Italy. That which 
should have been prevented when the island became 
a ‘predium’ of the Roman _ people, instead of a 
country given over to the Roman nobles, had actually 
happened more and more and in the course of time. 
The mighty slave wars arrested the land on this de- 
scending course. In these struggles it was especially 
the rich that suffered; the death of such numbers of 
slaves was a direct loss to them, but the wars cleared 
the air for the poor freemen. This result of the war 
is not a mere subjective construction; we may infer 
it from the orations against Verres, which, though 
containing numerous individual statements that are 
false, have nevertheless an undeniable value as _ por- 
traying the condition of the island in Cicero’s time. 
According to Cicero’s description, Sicily is an island 
in which, on the whole, the well-to-do middle class pre- 
ponderates, but in which excessive wealth is unusual. 
In this connexion it is a striking fact that there is 
hardly any mention of valuable works of art. With 
few exceptions no statues were owned by private citi- 
zens, whereas many possessed a silver saltcellar or a 
silver drinking-vessel. This preponderance of the 
middle class is a result of the slave wars, which pro- 
duced a thorough clearing among the slaves and there- 
fore also in the conditions of farming. No doubt 
many persons remained rich, in spite of the bad times, 


especially Roman landholders whose estates were not 


316 The Rulers of the Scuth 


exclusively in Sicily; but the worst masters had been 
the native imitators of the Romans, and those were 
altogether ruined if, indeed, they still existed at all. 
The middle-class citizens and the poor citizens thus 
found a field for their activity, and Sicily could again 
have a more healthy existence, both on its own 
account and with respect to Rome, which it was to 
supply with corn.” | 

The civil wars of Rome proceeded naturally from 
the hatred of one class for another. Had the two 
been less evenly matched, the disturbance might have 
produced all the phenomena of the French Revolution, 
but Sulla and the aristocrats were as strong as Marius 
and the democracy, and stronger; and while it is 
always the instinct of the lower class to destroy the 
upper class altogether, the upper class, being unable 
to live without the help of the social inferiors whom 
it has such good reason to fear, necessarily aims at 
keeping them in a state not far removed from servi- 
tude. An upper class that has no means of control- 
ling a lower class has no claim to be called an upper 
class at all, and is doomed either to destruction or to 
ridicule. In most modern countries the so-called aris- 
tocracies have chosen to be ridiculous rather than to 
be destroyed: The finaly triumph of (sulladicmeaes 
destroy the power of the lower class, it controlled it. 
The true leader of the people was to be Julius Ceesar. 

In Sicily the struggle had ended with Athenio’s 


The Romans 317 


death, and the island took no active part in the civil 
wars, but was governed alternately by the contending 
parties. When Marius, being on his way to Africa, 
wished to obtain water at Drepanum, he met with an 
energetic refusal on the part of the governor; a little 
later, his party was in power and the governor was one 
of his most active supporters; a little later again Sulla 
was in power, and the Marian governor retired hastily at 
the approach of Cneius Pompeius with six legions and 
a hundred and twenty ships; and the mild behaviour 
of Pompeius on this occasion is historical. The only 
city that resisted him was Thermz on the north coast, 
and when he was about to reduce it to submission, the 
chief man of the city came to him, demanding that 
the whole blame of the resistance should be laid upon 
himself. Pompeius was touched and forgave him. 
Only on two or three occasions the youthful Roman 
general behaved with a coldness that approached 
cruelty, conversing calmly with political prisoners 
whom he had already condemned to death. 

When Sulla undid what Caius Gracchus had done, 
and gave back to the Senate the jurisdiction which the 
reformer had succeeded in placing in the hands of the 
Roman knights, the governorship of Sicily was no 
longer given to a pretor, but to a proprztor, who 
resided in the island altogether and exercised his 
power more continually than the pretors had done; 
for while the latter had relied much upon the services 


318 The Rulers of the South 


of tax farmers, who had every interest in hoodwinking 
their superior in order to enrich themselves, and in 
accusing him unjustly when he seemed to them un- 
reasonably honest, the propreetor was able to extort 
money without their services, or at all events while 
controlling them for his own ends. This is the change 
a I tlic Ld eee 
cial government that _ 
led to the frightful abuse 
of power of which Verres 
was found guilty. 
Those who know Sicily 
even superficially must 
easily realize that its con- 





ditions of prosperity could 
change with surprising quick- 
ness in the alternations of peace 
and war. It was an altogether 
agricultural country, but it was, 
Pe or AC e and is still, the richest “inj the 
NEAR CATANIA Mediterranean. I will compare 

it, in its ditferent sstatessaiome: 

great foundry or manufactory. Everything required 
for the production of valuable merchandise is present, 
waiting to be smelted, cast, turned, and finished. 
Furnaces glow, hammers ring, lathes move silently 
and quickly, a thousand artisans are at work; and 


wealth is created hourly and instantly by sure and 


The Romans 319 


industrious hands. Presently comes the check; there 
is war, and the enemy is at hand, or the men 
strike and go away in a body. The place is the 
same, and yet it is all at once a dreary wilderness, 
the fires are gone out, the wind howls through 
the vast deserted sheds, the machinery rusts in the 
silence, and it all looks as if only a miracle could 
bring back the extinguished life. Yet all things are 
ready for the making of wealth, as they were before. 
The enemy retires, or the strike is over, and in a day 
the factory is once again in the roar and blast of 
production, alive and awake. 

Thus also Sicily lay waste from time to time, and 
awoke again to instant riches at the golden touch of 
peace. There is not a valley in the whole island 
where men have not lain in ambush to kill other men, 
nor a field that has not been dyed crimson, nor a 
lovely defile of the mountains whose rivulet has not 
run red. Within the narrow seagirt space, six hun- 
dred miles round, Greeks and Pheenicians, Cartha- 
ginians and Romans, Byzantines, Goths, Saracens, 
Normans, Frenchmen, Catalans, freemen, and slaves 
fought almost unceasingly for more than two thou- 
sand years; and in every brief interval of rest the 
rich soil brought forth its fruit a hundred fold, the 
blood-stained meadows blossomed again, and the battle- 
field of many nations was again the garden of the 
world, Excepting Rome and the surrounding plains 


320 The Rulers:-of-the South 


there is surely no like area in Europe wheremso 
many have died by violence; there is none where 
life is so ever ready to begin again. 

It is, therefore, not strange that after the slave 
wars Sicily should have accumulated great wealth, 
especially as the island was, on the whole, well gov- 
erned during that period, between the years 99 B.c. 
and.73 3.c.. During the latter part of thisytimesme 
office of quzestor, treasurer, in the western division, 
was held by Cicero, then a young man of thirty years, 
six years older than Julius Cesar. It was during his 
quzestorship that he acquired the profound knowledge 
of Sicily which he displayed in his speeches against 
Verres, one of the most atrocious robbers of any age. 
It was then that he wandered in the neighbourhood . 
of Syracuse, accompanied by a flattering court of 
distinguished Syracusans, who were not anxious to 
show him the tomb of Archimedes overgrown with 
brambles, because the great engineer had been an 
enemy to the Romans, and were quite willing to let 
the mild-mannered, book-loving quzstor give himself 
all the credit of the discovery. Of Cicero’s earlier 
and later life it is useless to speak here, but it is 
necessary to dwell a little upon the evil career of the 
great criminal from whose robberies the cities of 
Sicily never entirely recovered. Cicero’s speeches, on 
which the evidence against him rests, undoubtedly 


contained exaggerations, and were necessarily preju- 


The Romans cpl 


diced, but the consequences of Verres’ government 
are undeniable. It must be remembered, too, that 
Verres was found guilty on the evidence of the thou- 
sands of witnesses who appeared against him, and 
that he escaped to Marseilles, where he spent the 
rest of his life, before the hearing was over. Only 
two of the seven speeches were delivered; the rest 
were compiled from the records of the case, but not 
spoken. The great Hortensius, engaged to defend 
the accused, abandoned the case, though he was 
reckoned the most eloquent lawyer of his day, with 
the possible exception of Cicero himself. 

Verres was of noble birth, the son of a senator, 
who shared the plunder with him and defended him 
in the senate during his outrageous proceedings in 
the provinces, At the age of thirty, or little less, 
the young man was questor in Northern Italy, being 
then a partisan of Marius; but when he saw that 
Sulla was getting the better of the struggle, he 
promptly deserted to him, and was well received. 
He did not omit to steal all the public money then 
in his keeping, for which deed, in consideration of 
his accession to the party of Sulla, the latter never 
called him to account. Next, in the year 80 B.c., he 
was sent as legate to Asia Minor under Dolabella, 
a man of his own stamp, and it became his business 
to steal and extort money for his superior and 
himself. 


VOL. I § 


322 The Rulers of the south 


He possessed the most admirable taste in matters 
of art, and, like=more than one famous thierwenesnad 
the spirit of a collector. Beside his love of statues 
and pictures, his gross vices sink into insignificance ; 
his greed of money, and his cruelty in obtaining it, 
alone rival his passion for works of beauty. He shut 
up the chief official at Sicyon in a closet and smoked 
him with green wood till he was almost dead, merely 
to obtain gold. He stole pictures and statues in 
Achaia; he took a quantity of gold from the temple 
of Pallas in Athens; he carried off the best statues 
from the temple of Apollo in Delos; he plundered 
Tenedos, Chios, and Samos, and positively ravaged 
Pamphylia. His operations were conducted on a 
gigantic scale, and he carried off the treasures of the 
temples in carts and in broad daylight. When the 
treasurer of the province died, Dolabella made Verres 
pro-treasurer, and in this office he extended his op- 
pression throughout Milyas, Pisidia, and parts of 
Phrygia. As guardian, he robbed the only son of 
his best friend when the latter was dead; he robbed 
his enemies, the public, and the treasury, and returned 
to Italy with such a sum of money as enabled him 
to obtain a prztorship in Rome. He now turned his 
talents towards obtaining bribes in the cases which 
came before him for decision, and in robbing the 
fund for public buildings. On the ingenious excuse 
that the columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux 


The Romans 323 


were not all exactly perpendicular, though the error 
could only be detected by means of the plumb-line, 
he succeeded in upsetting a contract for the con- 
struction, in favour of another contractor, in which 
transaction he pocketed large sums of money. But 
in comparison with what he did afterwards, his doings 
in Asia Minor and in Rome must be looked upon as 
mere exercises, in which he obtained the experience 
necessary for a career of destructive robbery that has 
never been equalled. So, in modern Naples, and per- 
haps elsewhere, thieves set their children to pick the 
pockets of a lay figure that rings bells at the least 
incautious touch. 

In 73 B.c. Verres obtained the propretorship of Sicily 
by lot. He held it three years, and left his mark 
of desolation upon its cities for centuries, if not for- 
ever. During the term of his office, the insurrection 
of the gladiators and slaves under Spartacus required 
all Rome’s energy, and since Verres kept Sicily in 
subjection, and there were no signs of an outbreak 
under his governorship, he was allowed to do as he 
pleased until the measure of his iniquities was full, 
and he was finally called to account. 

The story of his three years’ government in Sicily, 
as told by Cicero in the Verrine orations, reads alter- 
nately like a fairy story and like a tale of almost 
prehistoric barbarism. It is a strange fact that when 
the staid Roman temper broke out and overstepped 


324 The Rulers" of thes souty 


all bounds, Romans went to lengths of fantastic dis- 
play on the one hand and of horrible cruelty on the 
other which surpassed what we know of Greeks or 
Phoenicians. Cicero draws a picture of Verres during 
his stay in Syracuse, and of his official journeys, in 
which we see the Roman propretor carried by eight 
stalwart slaves in a litter, lying upon cushions stuffed 
with rose leaves, clad in transparent gauze and Maltese 
lace, with garlands of roses on his head and round 
his neck, and delicately sniffing at a little net filled 
also with roses, lest any other odour should offend his 
nostrils. He had an artistic soul, and delighted in 
details that pleased the sense. He loved beauty, and 
wherever he went the fairest of the Sicilian ladies 
were his guests, while he robbed their fathers, their 
husbands, and their brothers. This important busi- 
ness, which was, indeed, the main one of his life, 
was everywhere managed with precision and despatch. 
He was never at a loss for an excuse for extorting 
money from a rich man. One of his methods was 
to seize upon valuable favourite slaves of great land- 
holders, accusing them of conspiring against him and 
condemning them to death at his pleasure, only that 
their masters might ransom them at ten times their 
value. Or, he would accuse of conspiracy a slave 
who had no existence, and then imprison the master 
for not producing the fictitious delinquent. The un- 
fortunate owner had the choice of ransoming himself 


The Romans R25 


at a ruinous price or of languishing in prison for an 
unlimited length of time. He spent the winter and 
generally the summer in Syracuse, where there is no 
winter's day without sunshine and no summer’s noon 
without the cool sea breeze. In the warm months 
he pitched his tents of fine linen at the entrance of 
the harbour, most probably under the shadow of the 
Plemmyrian promontory, where the breeze blows all 
day, and there he spent his time dressed in the ef- 
feminate tunic and purple cloak of the Greeks, in 
the company of his youthful son, who gave promise 
of imitating his father, surrounded by his cohort of 
flatterers, panders, and henchmen, curled and_per- 
fumed like himself. The Syracusan ladies came to 
his feasts, and sometimes complained bitterly when 
the daughter of a comic actor was treated with as 
much ceremony as themselves; but still they came, 
and lingered, and came again. 

It was an organized robbery, and Verres needed a 
base of operations and a harbour of export, whence 
he could ship his booty to his Italian estates. These 
appear to have been conveniently situated for the pur- 
pose in the neighbourhood of Velia, once Elea, the 
home of philosophy, but now, if it has a name, called 
Ascea. There, a little to the south of Licosa point, 
the small stream of the Alento swells to a torrent in 
winter and shrinks to a rivulet under the summer sun, 


when the air is poisoned with the southern fever. The 


326 The Rulers of the South 


fishermen beach their boats upon the sandy shore 
where Verres landed the wealth of Sicily from the 
great freight ship he had caused the Sicilians to 
build for him, for this sole purpose. But the base 
of operations he chose in Sicily was Messina; and in 
order that the Mamertine inhabitants might be friendly 
to him, and might not hinder his proceedings, he spared 
their city when he plundered all the rest, and excused 
them from contributions of corn and from supplying 
a man-of-war for the Sicilian fleet, which they would 
otherwise have been bound to do. Moreover, they 
were not obliged to supply soldiers and sailors for 
the service. In other cities he made a regular charge 
for giving the supposed soldiers and seamen perma- 
nent leave, at a fixed price, by the. year. It is need- 
less to say that besides the price of the leave given, 
the ingenious governor pocketed the pay which would 
have been due if the men had served their time. 

He neglected the fleet altogether, and the conse- 
quence was that Cilician pirates infested the waters 
about the island. Considering what has been done 
before and since in Sicily, it may well be supposed 
that Verres had a standing agreement with the pirates 
themselves. Once, however, in a fit of conscientious- 
ness, he allowed two of his officers with ten men-of- 
war to capture, near Megara, a pirate vessel so heavily 
laden that it was not able to get away. He appro- 
priated the cargo, which consisted of the most valuable 


The Romans 207 


booty, to his own use, picked out the old and useless 
men among the crew and threw them into prison, gave 
the young and handsome ones to his friends as slaves, 
and sent six musicians, who were found among them, 
to Rome, as a present to his lawyer, Hortensius. As 
for the captain of the pirates, no one ever saw hin, 
but some time afterwards, Verres caused a poor Roman 
citizen, who was perfectly innocent, to be executed for 
his crimes. When Syracuse rose in indignation and 
demanded the execution of the pirates, the governor 
took a number of other persons from prison and caused 
them to be put to death with their heads covered, lest 
they should be recognized. 

He was now obliged by public opinion to take some 
action against the pirates, and he sent out a small 
squadron in pursuit of them. The vessels sailed out 
with flying colours, and with every appearance of being 
fit for the expedition; but in reality they were short 
handed, and were so completely unprovided with pro- 
visions that when they reached Pachynus, a few miles 
to the southward, the whole company went ashore to 
seek for food, and, finding nothing better, they dug 
up the scrub palms and ate the roots. At the first 
news that pirates were in the vicinity, the commander 
cut his cable rather than lose time in getting the 
anchor up, made sail, and, having the best vessel, 
was out of sight almost before the ships he commanded 
could get under way. The pirates overhauled them 


328 The Rulers of the South 


on the high sea, took the men prisoners, and burnt 
the vessels. The news was known in Syracuse late 
at night, when Verres had retired to rest after an 
orgy; but no one dared to wake the sleeping gov- 
ernor. He was roused by the voices of the multitude 
without, and, when he appeared at dawn in military 
dress, he barely escaped being torn to pieces. Four 
pirate vessels quietly sailed into the harbour of Syra- 
cuse, and, coming close to the shore, their crews pelted 
the infuriated crowd with the roots of the scrub palms 
found in the ill-fated Roman vessels. The pirates 
departed in peace, and before long the unfortunate 
captains of the Roman ships were ransomed. Verres, 
of course, arrested them and condemned them to death 
as an example, and they were handed over to the exe- 
cutioner, who exacted a large sum of money from their 
relatives in return for his promise that they should 
have an easy death. Being dead, their bodies became 
the governor’s property, and he exacted a second ran- 
som for them by threatening to let them be devoured 
by dogs and wolves. 

It is easy to imagine the sort of persons by whom 
Verres was surrounded, men ready for every deed, 
accessible to every bribe, and quick to invent means of 
extortion. Allowing for the changes of time and the 
differences in his situation, these fellows represented 
the life-guard of a tyrant; bound to him by every 


personal interest, and sharing, in a small degree, in 


The Romans 329 


the profits of every crime. Cicero has preserved their 
names with some of their characteristics. I shall 
spare the reader both, and go on to tell how in a short 
time Verres made himself master of the wealth of the 
island by their assistance. One of his favourite 
methods was to get possession by legal frauds of 
large sums of money and other treasures left by 
will both to individual heirs and to temples. On 
one occasion he presented a large inheritance to the 
people of Syracuse with a great show of munificence, 
but was careful to reserve the greater part of it for 
himself. It was an easy matter, also, to find persons 
who had been tried under the previous pretor, but 
had been found not guilty, and to extort ransoms 
from them, on promise of not trying them again. 
One of the most atrocious acts of Verres was his 
robbery of Sthenius, the honourable citizen of Therme 
who had won the sympathy of Cneius Pompeius by 
frankly assuming the blame of his fellow-citizens’ con- 
duct. He was a collector of works of art, and had spent 
much of his life in gathering beautiful pictures and 
statues, Corinthian and Delian bronzes, and the like. 
Verres, when he was his guest, saw all these things. 
judged them good enough for his own collection, and 
seized upon them at once. It was not until he 
attempted to carry off the statues that belonged to 
the city itself that Sthenius opposed him. Verres 
retorted by causing a false accusation to be brought 


330 The Rulers of the South 


against him, and in spite of the efforts made in Rome 
in Sthenius’ favour, found him guilty and appropri- 
ated his whole fortune. In gratitude to Aphrodite, 
Verres presented her shrine at Eryx, now San Giuliano, 
with a beautiful figure of Eros selected from the 
spoil. 

Before long another opportunity of wholesale robbery 
presented itself. The rebellion which had broken out 
in Spain under Sertorius, one of the former generals 
of Marius, was at an end, and Verres conceived the 
ingenious plan of seizing ships that arrived from the 
northern coast, on the ground that there were fugitive 
Sertorians on board of them. The crews were thrown 
into prison in the Latomie of Syracuse, and were 
generally executed in the place of pirates who were 
allowed to escape, while the cargoes of the vessels 
became the governor’s property. From this time his 
cruelties increased with his greed. He caused a Roman 
citizen to be scourged and crucified, which was a crime 
against the liberty of the Roman people; he beheaded 
more than a hundred Roman citizens; he slew whom 
he pleased, and in every case he seized the victim’s 
goods. Moreover, he caused enormous sums to be 
appropriated to erect statues to himself, not only in 
the oicilianycitics Dub evens ilimwoinc 

The most wholesale of all his robberies was that 
of the corn which was supposed to be sent from the 
island to Rome. He sent one-third to the capital, 





OLIVE TREES IN THE 
; LATOMIA DE! CAPPUCCINI, SYRACUSE 











=. . = 


DO 





The Romans 331 


and sold the other two-thirds for his own benefit. He 
ground the tax-gatherers, who were of course tax- 
farmers, and the latter beat and starved the landholders 
till they paid the uttermost measure they possessed. 
Whole cities were laid under contribution in this way, 
and the islands near Sicily did not escape. In three 
years, according to Cicero, he stole about thirty-six 
millions of sestertil, appropriated for buying corn over 
and above that yielded by the tribute, and the sum 
is equal to about two hundred and thirty thousand 
pounds sterling. It would not be despised even by a 
modern political swindler, and money was worth far 
more then than now. For Verres, however, it was 
only an item; the whole amount of his vast rob- 
beries cannot well be guessed, much less correctly 
calculated, either from Cicero’s statements or from 
other sources. It may have amounted to a million of 
pounds sterling, or to much more, if the value of 
works of art be taken into consideration. Mark 
Antony is said to have squandered eight hundred 
millions of pounds sterling in his fifty-three years of 
life, but at one time he disposed of Italy and Asia 
Minor. 

What is most astonishing is that, when Verres’ third 
term of office was over, nothing was done, and his succes- 
sor was appointed without comment. The Romans were 
not easily moved to compassion by the wrongs of those 
subject to them, Sicily was full of slaves, and Rome had 


339 The Rulers of the South 


only lately crushed out the great rebellion of Spartacus 
in the south of Italy. In Capua, the luxurious capital 
of pleasure-loving Campania, one Lentulus Batiatus had 
a company of Gallic and Thracian gladiators, among 
whom was Spartacus, himself a Thracian of great 
strength, courage, and military talent, and possessing 
a sort of dignified superiority hardly to have been ex- 
pected in one who had been born a shepherd and had 
turned highwayman in his own country. A faithful 
woman loved him and shared his life, and perhaps his 
death; and she had the gift of divination, and prophe- 
sied that he should become very great and terrible and 
have a happy end; which things came true, for he was 
the terror of the Romans and he died in battlems) ine 
whole company of gladiators numbered two hundred, 
and they conspired to escape from their bondage, but 
only seventy-eight of them succeeded. These seized 
upon the iron spits and carving-knives and whittles 
which they found in a cook’s shop, and marched out 
of Capua in broad daylight, for they were all trained 
fighters, and very strong men, and it was better not to 
hinder them. They met upon the road certain waggons, 
laden with gladiators’ weapons, the same perhaps that 
were to have been used by themselves in the coming 
show. Having armed themselves, they marched south- 
ward and took possession of the crater of Vesuvius, 
then extinct and overgrown with grass and wild vines. 


“The place was almost impregnable, and when. three 


The Romans eek) 


thousand Roman soldiers attacked it on the most ac- 
cessible side, the gladiators climbed down by the vines 
on the other, came round the crater, and fell upon their 
assailants in the rear, putting them to shameful flight 
and getting possession of their weapons. Spartacus 





VESUVIUS, ON THE DAY BEFORE THE ERUPTION OF MAY, I900 


was the leader of the band. He proclaimed all slaves 
to be free, and in an incredibly short space of time he 
was ravaging all Southern Italy at the head of forty 
-thousand desperate men. In the next year he had 
Seventy. thousand, then a hundred thousand, and he 
thought of attacking Rome itself. He defeated one 


334 The Rulers of the South 


consular army after another, made many captives, and 
forced the Romans to fight as gladiators for his amuse- 
ment, as he had once fought for theirs. His plan was 
to lead his army out of Italy in the end, and either to 
plunder other countries or to return to his home. But 
his men loved the south, as almost all fighting men 
have always loved it, and in the south he met his death 
at last. When it came to the end he was opposed to 
Crassus in a great battle, and before it began he slew 
his horse in the sight of his men, saying that if he won 
the day he should have horses enough, but that if he 
lost it he should need none. He lost the day, and 
died, and they traced his last charge by the heaps 
of the slain, but no one could find what was left of his 
body. Then the Romans impaled six thousand of his 
men upon stakes along the Appian way. And these 
things took place while Verres was governor of Sicily, 
besides much more that had the interest of life and 
death for the Roman people. 

When the time was past, however, the Sicilians 
determined to bring Verres to justice if it were possible, 
by demanding restitution of money extorted from them. 
Verres belonged to the aristocratic party, which had 
always employed for its defender the famous Hor- 
tensius, called the ‘King of the Forum.’ Cicero had 
made himself beloved by the Sicilians during his quees- 
torship in the west, and he advised them to bring a col- 
lective action. Excepting Messina, which Verres had 


The Romans 335 


highly favoured, and Syracuse, all the principal cities 
sent deputations to Rome to represent them. 

It is not my intention to enter into all the elaborate 
proceedings which made up the trial of the great 
thief. His friends attempted everything legal and 
illegal in the hope of preventing the case from coming 
to a hearing. Cicero was without doubt the advocate 
chosen by the Sicilian people for the prosecution, but 
an accomplice of the accused made a formal attempt 
to be chosen in Cicero’s place, and the first of the 
Verrine orations was delivered in order to dispose of 
this adversary. Cicero then asked for an interval 
of one hundred and ten days before the trial, to admit 
of his travelling through Sicily in order to collect 
evidence. This was no sooner granted than the friends 
of Verres trumped up a suit of a similar nature to 
recover a claim for alleged extortions in Achaia, for 
which an interval of only one hundred and eight days 
was asked, in order that this suit might be called before 
that of Verres, thus putting off the latter’s case indefi- 
nitely. Cicero departed at once upon his journey, and 
although the friends of Verres hindered him at every 
step, especially in Syracuse, where the new governor 
exercised a good deal of influence in favour of the 
accused man, the great lawyer had no difficulty in 
collecting such a mass of evidence as made the crimi- 
nal’s acquittal almost impossible. On the other hand 
the friends of Verres displayed the utmost activity ; 


336 The Rulers of the South 


they made unsuccessful attempts to bribe Cicero him- 
self, and, failing in this, they spread the report that 
he had received the bribes which he had refused. The 
judges were also above corruption. Verres, however, 
by a liberal expenditure of money, succeeded in bring- 
ing about the election of his lawyer, Hortensius; and 
of his friend, Quintus Metellus, to be consuls in the 
following year. The governor of Sicily was a brother 
of this Metellus, and another brother was designated 
as supreme judge of the court before which the case 
was to be tried. The court itself, however, as is well 
known, consisted practically of jurymen, which each 
side possessed the right of challenging. The plan 
of the defence was to protract the proceedings into 
the following year, and this was not by any means 
an impossibility, as the courts did not sit during the 
long periods set apart for public games at the close 
of the year, and it was expected that the prosecution 
would consume many weeks in hearing evidence. Wit- 
nesses had been collected from every part of the 
Roman dominions, from Asia Minor, from Sicily, from 
the islands of Lipari and Malta, and thousands of 
persons, not themselves interested in the trial, had 
travelled to Rome out of curiosity, to be present at the 
great judicial conflict before the games began. The 
suit at last opened in the temple of Castor and Pol- 
lux in the Forum. It is said that the roofs of the 


surrounding houses, the porticos and the steps of the 


The Romans a37 


temples, were thronged by the vast multitude of those 
who had been robbed by Verres, who mourned the 
parents and brethren he had murdered, and whose 
inheritance had been taken from them to swell his 
enormous hoard. There were men, women and chil- 
dren even from the shores of the Black Sea, from 
Mount Taurus and from Greece; there were noble 
Greeks and Phoenicians of ancient lineage, officials 
ruined and wrongfully disgraced, and priests from the 
temples whence the governor had collected his mag- 
nificent gallery of statues, pictures and precious ves- 
sels. Cicero was pressed for time; the games, which 
must cause a suspension of the proceedings, were 
at hand; his case was very strong, and he deter- 
mined to let it rest upon the evidence alone. Instead 
of making a long address, he began by the examination 
of the witnesses, and from the first day the defence 
was ruined. Hortensius made a feeble attempt to 
change the course of the proceedings, and then almost 
immediately threw up the case and advised Verres to 
leave Rome. He did so without delay, and conveyed 
himself and the greater part of his ill-gotten wealth 
to Marseilles, where he was suffered to live unmolested 
for many years. Had he awaited the verdict, he would 
at most have been exiled, but he might have suffered 
the confiscation of his property. Cicero composed the 
remainder of the Verrine orations from the reports of 


the trial and from his own notes, and published them 


VOL. I Z 


338 The Rulers of the South 


as an account of the greatest judicial triumph he had 
as yet achieved. Verres lived to hear of Cicero’s exe- 
cution under the proscription proclaimed by Mark 
Antony, and which was his own death warrant, for 
his name was on the list. It is recorded that he died 
with the courage and equanimity of a good and 
brave man, but he is by no means the only great crimi- 
nal in history who has behaved with firmness and even 
dignity when confronted with the executioner. 

Thus ended the famous trial, not indeed with any 
restitution of goods stolen and extorted from the 
oppressed Sicilians, nor with any adequate punishment 
of the chief offender, but at least in a public act which 
was on the side of justice, and for which Rome deserves 
some credit in the stormy days that preceded the final 
overthrow of the republic. 

In the great struggle between Julius Czesar and the 
party of the Senate, Sicily played no great part. 
When Julius Czesar determined to occupy the island, 
Marcus Porcius Cato withdrew at once, advising the 
Sicilians to make no useless resistance. Later, Pompey 
the Great burned a number of Czesar’s ships when they 
were fitting out in the harbour of Messina. In 47 B.c., 
when Cesar carried war into Africa, Sicily was once 
more a base of operations, and the conqueror gathered 
his fleet in Lilybzeum, as both the Scipios had done 
before him. It was his intention to extend the rights 
of citizenship to the inhabitants of the island, and he 


The Romans 339 


seems to have granted favours of this nature to sev- 
eral cities; but his murder checked the extension of 
civilization, and when Mark Antony passed a law 
making all Sicilians Roman citizens it was merely for 
the sake of obtaining a large sum of money, and was 
never carried out. In 43 B.c., during Octavian’s wars, 
Sextus Pompeius, the great Pompey’s son, succeeded 
in getting possession of the whole island almost with- 
out striking a blow, most probably by promising the 
Sicilians the long-coveted rights of citizenship. 

In the division of the Roman possessions among the 
triumvirs, Augustus, still called Octavian, took Africa, 
Sardinia, and Sicily. Sicily was of the highest impor- 
tance to him as being the granary from which Rome 
derived her corn, and being still in the possession of 
Sextus it was evidently necessary for Octavian to drive 
him out before taking any other steps to extend his 
power. But he did not succeed at once; his fleet came 
into conflict with that of Sextus in the Straits of Mes- 
sina, where his officers and seamen were at a disad- 
vantage owing to their ignorance of the currents, and 
withdrew from the fight as far as the place now called 
Bagnara. Sextus remained in possession. 

After the battle of Philippi, Sicily was the only 
part of the great Roman territory which was not yet 
in the power of the triumvirate, and became a refuge 
for all those who were unwilling to submit to its dic- 
tation. The continuation of the civil war and the 


340 The Rulers of the South 


differences which arose between the triumvirs left 
Sextus for some time in undisputed possession of the 
island, and before long he found it advantageous to 
attempt an alliance with Mark Antony. The wise 
Octavian, however, used more diplomatic means for 
preventing such a friendship, and took to wife Scrt- 
bonia, whose niece was the wife of Sextus. Antony, 
who at first had not accepted the latter’s overtures, 
now appealed to him directly for help, in order to 
attack Southern Italy; but Octayian promptly recon- 
ciled himself with Antony, and the latter sent Sextus 
back to his island. He, however, fully understanding 
the strength of his position, continued to control the 
price of bread in Rome by hindering or facilitating 
the export of corn from Sicily at his pleasure. He 
at last succeeded in obtaining a sort of acknowledg- 
ment of his rights over Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, with 
the neighbouring islands, and Achaia, for a period as 
long as that during which Octavian and Antony were 
to hold the territories allotted to them; and in return 
for these dominions and other advantages he was to 
provide Rome with corn and he was to marry his 
daughter to Octavian’s nephew. But the treaty was 
unsound and the peace it concluded was of short 
duration. It was signed at Baiz, close to Misenum, 
in 39 B.c., and the generals feasted each other with 
great rejoicing. 

In the following year one of the generals of Sextus 


The Romans 341 


betrayed Sardinia and Corsica to Octavian, who had 
not meant to abide by the treaty if he could get any 
advantage by breaking it. Sextus sent a fleet up 
the coast to attack Octavian’s ships, and defeated 
them off Cume, just north of Misenum; in a duel 
which was fought between the two admirals, when 
their ships had grappled each other, Menecrates, who 
fought for Sextus, was wounded in the thigh with a 
barbed dart and sprang overboard rather than be 
taken; but his ships were victorious after his death. 
More than once after this Octavian made attempts 
to land in Sicily before he at last succeeded. He 
lost most of a new fleet in a gale of wind in the 
Straits of Messina, and set himself to make greater 
preparations. He built and collected three fleets, one 
at Baiz in the basinlike lagoon now calied the Mare 
Morto or “dead sea,’ one at Tarentum, one in an 
African harbour. The date of sailing was fixed, the 
same for all three, and two were commanded by the 
triumvirs Octavian and Lepidus in person. A furious 
southwester destroyed most of Octavian’s ships in the 
bay of Velia just north of Cape Palinurus, if not on 
the awful rocks of the grim promontory; Antony’s 
fleet ran back to shelter in Tarentum; that of Lepi- 
dus, being before the wind, made Lilybzum, and he 
marched across Sicily to Messina, claiming Sicily for 
himself. When at last the others could put to sea 


again, Octavian landed in Sicily and brought the war to 


342 The Rulers of the South 


a decisive issue in a battle near Mylz, now Milazzo, in 
the month of August, 36 B.c. Sextus Pompeius fled 
to the East, and his domination was at an end. In 
the following year, when attempting to found an 
independent power in Asia, he fell into the hands 
of one of Antony’s generals and was put to death. 
The battle of Naulochus, near Milazzo, was not the 
end of Octavian’s wars; he had not yet cleared the 
world of his adversaries; Lepidus indeed surrendered 
when his soldiers deserted him, and he begged for 
his life upon his knees, but Actium had not yet been 
fought and Antony had not stabbed himself in Egypt. 

From the date of Octavian’s conquest the position 
of Sicily began to change, and it was long before it 
again assumed a similar importance in history. With 
the empire began a period of peace and of agricultural 
development which raised the island to the height of 
prosperity; it had been demonstrated that no one 
could hold Rome who did not hold the granary whence 
Rome obtained her daily bread, and the emperors held 
it fast for centuries and bestowed exceptional care 
upon its good management. It had suffered severely 
during the wars of Sextus Pompeius, and Augustus sent 
a colony of Romans to Syracuse. The city, once 
seventeen miles in circumference, comprising five cities 
in one, had shrunk till it consisted of Ortygia and a 
small part of Achradina, much as it is to-day. Colonies 
were established in like manner in many other cities 


The Romans 343 


of the island and even in Panormus, and the Latin 
influence began to be felt throughout the country, 
though not in such a manner as at first threatened the 
venerally Greek spirit and the almost universal use of 
the Greek language. Brigandage had become a per- 
manent evil, and was never again stamped out. The 
world-famous temple of Aphrodite on the war-worn 
heights of Eryx lost its importance, and but a few 
priests and priestesses remained there. In the interior 
many of the smaller towns were become shepherds’ 
hamlets. Holm criticises many of these statements, 
which are taken from Strabo, as being much exagger- 
ated, and the judgment of the master historian of 
Sicily cannot be treated lightly. But we must not for- 
get the simile of the factory, and for the time being, dur- 
ing the wars of Sextus, the fires were extinguished, and 
the country must have assumed that desolate air which 
is characteristic of any agricultural region when agri- 
culture is temporarily checked. The flocks and herds 
live on, though they may not multiply, from year to year, 
and the shepherd and herdsman drive their charge to 
pasture in lonely valleys, preserving a sort of wealth 
that does not easily perish all at once. But where no 
corn is planted, no corn will grow, and where the stubble 
of last year stands in the unploughed field, there it 
will rot, while the plough rusts beside the desolate hut, 
and the starving people wander among the woods and 


mountains, living on roots and wild fruit, or snaring 


344 The Rulers of the South 


the small game when they have the skill. If the 
island had not suffered very much, Augustus would 
not have thought it necessary to recolonize so much 
of it. The Roman farmers were far less skilful than 
the Greeks and the colonists were probably not the 
best’ of the agriculturists; it was notte = teachwae 
islanders that thousands of Italians were sent among 
them, but rather to replenish the exhausted population, 
and to revive the country, that its matchless soil might 
bear corn enough to feed Rome, instead of only graz- 
ing cattle which could be raised as well elsewhere. 
It is stated that the colonists were given land that 
belonged to the state, and that the original landholders 
were not deprived of any property. To make this 
possible, as it was, great tracts of ownerless country 
must have been lying fallow. 

Yet the cities were not ruined, and the old vitality 
was not dead in them. With the increased safety of 
the open country, the life spread out again in all direc- 
tions, less Greek than before, and more Roman, but 
classic still and full of a certain free beauty that could 
not be stamped out by anything short of universal 
destruction. The Greek blood was mixed and tainted, 
but it was Greek still. Even to-day, there are towns, 
such as Piana dei Greci, near Palermo, where the lan- 
guage is spoken altogether, after nearly two thousand 
and five hundred years. It is easy to guess how 
thoroughly Hellenic Sicily must still have been in the 


The Romans 345 


days of Augustus, when Greek was the fashionable 
language of Roman society, and Greek art was the 
delight of every man who was rich enough to own 
a statue or a picture. It is hard to understand why 
Romans thought it such bitter hardship to be exiled 
to Sicily that they sometimes preferred death to such 
a fate. They must have loved their city with some- 
thing more than patriotism, with the almost childish 
attachment of the true Parisian for Paris. 

Until the completion of the Roman conquest Sicily 
had preserved a sort of independence of character, with 
peculiarities of manners and customs which were not 
only Greek, but individual and different from all that 
characterized the southern mainland. It was the 
intention of Augustus to make the south altogether 
homogeneous with the rest of Italy, and though this 
was never completely accomplished either by him or 
his successors, it was chiefly by his efforts that the 
great change was brought about. Before the Roman 
conquest, it would not have occurred to any one to 
think of Sicily otherwise than as an extension of Greece ; 
since then, it has been impossible to consider it except 
as a part of Italy. It never was at any time the resi- 
dence of a Roman emperor, but some of the more 
important emperors visited it from time to time. 
Augustus spent some months in the island in 22 and 
21 B.c. at the time when he created the Roman colo- 


nies. Caligula is recorded to have fled from Messina 


346 The Rulers of the South 


by night, frightened by an eruption of Etna, and to 
have celebrated games in Syracuse. Hadrian was in 
Sicily 126 A.D. and it is an undoubted fact that he 
made the ascent of the volcano at this time. Septimius 
Severus, before becoming emperor, was proconsul in 
Sicily. 

The Roman influence to which the island was now 
subjected was strong enough to check the develop- 
ment of Greek culture, though not to destroy the 
Greek character of the people; and though an occa- 
sional rhetorician such as Cecilius of Calacte or Sex- 
tus Clodius acquired some reputation, Sicily produced 
neither poets nor historians of importance, and the 
art of that period shows rapid degeneration. 

Although it may be said on the whole that what 
remains of ancient monuments in the island is by 
nature Greek, yet with the exception of the great 
temples, and not even excepting all of these, there 
is not much that has not suffered from what the 
Romans doubtless called improvement. In Syracuse, 
for instance, it seems certain that the Greek theatre 
was ‘improved’ by the Romans, and that the original 
simplicity of the noble stage was marred by the intro- 
duction of more or less degenerate ornaments. The 
same and more may be said of the amphitheatre, 
-which must have been repeatedly enlarged and 
adorned. 

The theatre of Taormina is one of the most com- 


The Romans 347 


pletely Roman buildings in Sicily, though it undoubt- 
edly occupies the site of the Greek theatre which 
preceded it. If it is one of the most beautiful spots 
in the whole known world, this is not due to the skill 
of the Roman builders, but rather to the astounding 
contrasts of nature which fall within the view, the 
vast height of the snow-capped volcano, the smooth 
enamel of the southern sea, the bold but strangely 
graceful curves of the hills on the right, the sheer 
fall of the land on the left, the incredible wealth of 
colour in nature, and the depth of the airy perspec- 
tive in which every separate distance has a separate 
value, from the furthest line of the horizon to the 
soft outlines of the Calabrian hills, from the misty 
crown of Etna to the near fortress of Mola high on 
the right; and then, nearer still, to the rich brown 
ruin of the Roman stage at the spectator’s feet. Stand- 
ing on the highest tier of the theatre, a single column 
rears its graceful shape against the distance, insignifi- 
cant before the whole, as a moment in the midst of 
eternity, but lovely with all the beauty that a single 
moment may contain. No Greek would have reared 
a gallery of columns above the theatre, but one may 
well forgive the bad taste of the Roman architect for 
the sake of the something romantic which never could 
have been Greek, and which clings to the ruins of 
his work. The traveller pauses and asks himself, per- 


haps in vain, why it is that a stronger human inter- 


348 The Rulers of the South 


est lies in the ruins of Roman buildings than in any 


of the exquisite monuments preserved to us from 





THE HIGHEST TIER OF THE THEATRE AT TAORMINA 


Grecian times; why the Coliseum, which is really 
hideous, has a far stronger hold upon our feelings 


than the Parthenon, which expresses the highest con. 


The Romans 349 


ception of genius; why the single column in the 
theatre of Taormina touches the heart, whereas the 
superb theatre of Syracuse, faultless at almost every 
point, only imposes upon the judgment and_ pleases 
the taste ; or why the fame of Hera at Girgenti, noble 
and perfect under a perfect sky, has not the power 
of stirring deep memories with a thrill of imaginative 
life which is felt in every shadowy corner and gloomy 
recess of the catacombs below San Giovanni in Syra- 
cuse. The more often such a question presents itself, 
the harder it is to answer. Romance and beauty are 
neither the same, nor do they proceed from the same 
source; the one is often most abundantly present 
where the other is most completely lacking; beauty 
of form, of thought, and of execution was almost a 
prerogative of the early Greeks. This is so certain 
that the mere word Greek is often used in English 
and in other languages as synonymous with beautiful. 
We say ‘Greek features, and we mean the. most 
perfect features found in humanity; we say Greek 
-art, and we mean the highest things that art has 
ever thought or done; Greek philosophy is the source 
of all our philosophic thought, the Greek epic poem 
is almost unrivalled and wholly unsurpassed, the Greek 
play is the inimitable model after which the playwrights | 
of the world have shaped their tragedies and their 
comedies ever since. Yet, to most men, the Greeks 


themselves, as we seem to know them, with their 


350 The Rulers*ot the south 


refinements, their sensitive taste, their talent for 
treachery, and their genius for art, are no more sym- 
pathetic than the Japanese, who possess many of 
the same characteristics, much of the same sensibility, 
and an artistic culture which in its way is quite as 
unrivalled as anything of which Greece could boast. 
The parallel might be carried far, and the recent 
general interest which the world has taken in Japan 
has collected abundant materials for an extensive com- 
parison, of which the Japanese themselves may be 
justly proud. But so far as human nature is con- 
cerned, so far as their thoughts appeal to our thoughts, 
their motives to our motives, their ideal of honour to 
ours, they might as well be inhabitants of another 
planet; and they doubtless smile at the unceasing 
efforts of modern Europeans to understand them, pre- 
cisely as the subtle Greek was secretly amused by the 
Roman’s clumsy attempts to imitate him. 

No one has ever successfully defined romance. It 
may, perhaps, be that indefinable something in thought, 
word, and deed, and in the monuments that recall 
both deeds and thoughts, which makes us feel akin 
with the hero, the poet and the saint; that some- 
thing which produces in the reader of history or fic- 
tion the intoxicating illusion that identifies him with 
the chief actor in the story, which makes the traveller 
pause upon the spot where some great fight was fought 
ages ago by men of his race, and wish with a longing 


The Romans 351 


which he can neither understand nor control, that he 
too might have lived then to strike a blow in their good 
cause, to shed his blood with theirs, to fall where they 
so memorably fell. It is that something which seizes 
upon a whole audience that witnesses in a play the 
conflict of its own passions—that something which 
no audience, however cultivated, however trained in 
classic thought, ever quite feels for a Greek play like 
‘Cedipus Tyrannus,’ though it be played in a modern 
language, by the greatest actors of modern times, 
though its theatrical form is so perfect that every 
modern writer would imitate it if he could, and though 
its story is full of the most breathless and unflagging 
interest. 

We do not readily realize how much Christianity has 
had to do with our conception of manly honour. It 
has influenced also our feeling for the romantic much 
more than we may be inclined to admit. A¢sthetically 
speaking, as well as socially, Christianity is the link 
that connects us with the ancients, and the connexion 
has been through Rome and Italy, not through Greeks 
or Asiatics. With Eastern Christians, the contrary 
has taken place, and one need only look at the dif- 
ference between us and them, with regard to social 
honour, to understand that our standard is Roman, and 
theirs Greek, that we feel sympathy for Regulus, while 
they find their ideal in Pericles, if not in Alcibiades ; 
and that this difference is fundamental, lasting, and 


352 The Rulers of the South 


almost unvarying. For us, the high-water mark of 
romance is in the middle ages, somewhere between 
the first and last Crusades, but somehow we feel that 
the romantic began in that sort of prevision of Chris- 
tian honour and self-sacrifice, sometimes found among 
Romans, but never, I think, among Greeks, — the idea 
of. honour. that made Virginius stab his daughter in 
the Forum, that prompted Curtius to spring armed 
into the gulf, and sent Regulus back to certain death 
for the sake of his plighted word. This connexion of 
the thought of honour with Rome is one of those 
matters, more of sentiment than of history, more of 
instinctive feeling than of demonstrable fact, concern- 
ing which it is not good to argue too much, lest one 
be led away into finding specious reasons, where the 
true reason eludes the thinker. The undeniable and 
evident. corollary, however, is that Christianity is, in 
some way or- other, the bridge over which we lead our 
thoughts back to the ancient world. 

This link-or bridge connects the reign of Augustus 
and the Augustan age with the times of Constantine, 
and includes a period which is fraught with legends 
of good men and bad, during which the south has 
no political history worth recording, but during which 
its whole nature and appearance were inwardly and 
outwardly changed by the preaching of Christianity, 
by the examples of the many martyrs, and by the 
steady growth of a new morality which, from small 


The Romans isle’ 


beginnings and in opposition to what seemed over- 
whelming odds, gradually encroached upon the ancient 
system, threw it into confusion, and finally drove it 
out altogether. That period is a sort of long miracle 
play, in which devoted men appear as the chief char- 
acters; apostles, missionary bishops, and saintly pres- 
byters on the one side, and, on the other, emperors, 
preetors, proconsuls, and luxurious Romans, the en- 
slaved multitude of the nameless poor ranged with 
the first, against the dimly splendid power of Rome. 
In such a conflict history becomes personal narrative, 
and the individual leader stands out from the con- 
fusion of the struggle, the centre of action, of interest, 
and of glory, the natural type and predestined repre- 
sentative of the Christian man, the champion and 
protagonist of Christian freedom against heathen slav- 
civ) 50, too, im Homeric times, the leaders stood 
out before the hosts on each side and challenged one 
another, and the story of war was the record of their 
deeds; while the ranks of Greeks and Trojans, un- 
noticed and unsung, fought obscure battles for life 
and death, and made the history which their chiefs 
adorned. 

First came the rumour of Christianity from Pales- 
tine, travelling westward, as all new things travel, 
away from unchanging Asia, towards all change and 
progress and advancing thought. For the most it 
came by slaves, who told each other tales of wonder, 


VOL. I 2A 


354 The Rulerssorm thes. out 


tugging in chains at the galley oar, in the foul air 
between decks, or working in irons in the southern 
fields; tales that sounded like fairy stories of a time 
that never was and never could be, in which all men 
were to be set free, but not by force, nor in violent 
insurrection, nor by blood-shedding; and with the 
stories came the greater truth, for which the poor 
longed vaguely without understanding it, the truth of 
immortality and of a larger freedom among the dead, 
but altogether beyond death. A few of these ru- 
mours reached educated men also. A French writer 
of great talent has told an imaginary anecdote of 
Pontius Pilate, coming back to Italy when deposed 
from his procuratorship, full of care and trouble 
and tormented by political questions that were to him 
of vital importance. Near Baiz, I think, he met an 
old friend, a reader and philosopher, and after some 
conversation this man asked him about Jesus, and 
about his condemnation to death. But Pilate’s look 
was vague, he could not remember. ‘Jesus?’ he 
asked. ‘I do not recollect the name.’ 

The story is the fiction of a gifted writer, designed 
to show how small an impression the greatest event 
in the world’s history made upon the mind of a pro- 
saic Roman official, preoccupied for his own reputa- 
tion which was at stake; but there is a typical truth 
in it which makes it seem possible at first’ sight. 

The story of the introduction of Christianity into 


The Romans 355 


Sicily and the south is an inextricable confusion of 
truth and legend. Some say that the Apostle Peter, 
having founded the commonwealth of Antioch, sent 
out two bishops as missionaries to Sicily; and that 
one, who was called Pancras, came to Taormina and 
landed upon the beach where the first Greek colonists 
had drawn up their ships eight hundred years earlier. 
Whether this be so or not, there is little evidence and 
no proof; but it has been believed by many and the 
statue of the holy man stands upon the beach to this 
day. To shelter it from wind and weather, it has 
been moved a little inward and placed by the wall of 
the small church. The inscription says that it was 
set up in 1691 in honour of the first bishop of all 
Sicily, ordained. by Saint Peter in the fortieth year 
of our Lord. The second bishop who was sent out 
was Martian, also saint and martyr, and he came to 
Syracuse and overthrew temples and built a church 
and wrought many wonders. In the first place he 
gathered together his converts in a great subterranean 
chamber which is beneath the church of San Giovanni 
near the walls of Achradina, not far from the baths of 
Venus, where the marvellous statue of the goddess 
which is in the museum of Syracuse was found among 
the fragments of forty-two marble columns, a hundred 
years ago; near to the place, too, was the synagogue 
of the Jews; and it is said that Saint Martian chose 
this spot as a convenient one from which to preach 


356 The Rulers of the South 


the gospel to Jews and Gentiles alike. It is indeed 
a place of many holy memories, for Saint Paul came 
hither after his shipwreck in Malta and dwelt here 
three days, and hither it was said that Saint Peter 
himself came, on his way to Rome. 

Here, too, is the burial-place of the very early 
Christians, and it is not now thought that it had been 
previously used by the Greeks. There is no city of 
the dead in all the world more solemn, more silent, 
or more suggestive of that peace which especially 
distinguishes Christian burial-places from all others. 
The Parsees’ Tower of Silence, built up to represent 
the loneliness of the hill summit whereon the ele- 
ments of man should be dissolved into the elements 
of the universe, is horrible with death within, and is 
made hideous without by flocks of vultures and 
loathsome birds of prey. The tombs of the Romans 
and the Greeks were places of gay resort upon the 
public way, the urns within them held a handful of 
ashes and a few pinches of dry dust, flowers were 
trained round the walls, and in the miniature gardens 
were set up three couches and a table for the feasts 
anniversary of death. Below, the road, the crowd, 
the chariot of the rich, the cry of the fruit-seller) the 
tramp of the soldier, the laughter of boys and girls. 
There was no peace there; there was only the evi- 
dent and determined will to hide from the living the 
conditions of death, What Swinburne has called ‘the 





- 
‘ 
, 
o~ TAMA c AT “it ATIacm 
+ wri sabewlivilow ~~ Net 4 9 Le 
~ 
' 
-~ ” 2 f 
‘ 











The Romans 357 


lordly repose of the dead,’ the peace of the body on 
earth, the departure of the soul to a place of refresh- 
ment, light, and peace in heaven, is a solely Chris- 
tian conception. Nowhere perhaps can one so well 
understand what it means, as in the catacombs of 
Rome or Sicily, and those of Syracuse are nobler, 
more permanent, and, strange to say, of far greater 
extent. 

Corridor and chamber follow each other indefinitely, 
each vaulted hall surrounded by deep niches, within 
which graves deeper still have been hollowed in the 
living rock. It is not the crumbling tufa of the 
Roman Campagna, it is the same splendid rock in 
which the Greeks carved the tiers of their great 
theatre, and in which the Romans hewed the rough 
tombs that border the highway above it. Here, below 
the surface of the earth, it is a strange sensation. to be 
in what one may well call a city, carved in one-piece 
out of one stone. Here and there, at first, a bright 
light falls through apertures in the larger chambers, 
each separated from the next by a dark- passage lined 
with graves. There are graves in the rocky floor, and 
to the right and left, and one above another in tiers 
to the spring of the solid vault; and one may go on 
and on, without end, mile after mile, through the unex- 
plored silence, and many believe that the passages 
reach even to Catania, more than thirty miles away. 


Here Saint Martian lived and preached, and_ by 


358 The Rulers of the South 


the sea-shore, not far away, it is said that he was 
put to death, not by heathens, but by the Jews; and 
that in the first place they laid him bound in a boat 
and set fire to it, and pushed it from the shore, but 
that, when they had seen that the fire had no power 
over him, they brought him to the beach again and 
strangled him. 

In Taormina, Saint Pancras, says the tale, destroyed 
a temple by the sign of the cross, and silenced an 
oracle by fastening a letter upon the neck of the 
god’s statue; and he made many converts, including 
the prefect of the city, and lived many years from the 
year 40 A.D., in which he was ordained by Saint Peter, 
until the year about 100, when’ he was martyred in 
the reign of Trajan. ; 

Next after the first two missionary bishops and Saint 
Luke the evangelist, comes the story of Saint Paul, 
authentic beyond all doubt and now known to be 
accurate beyond all dispute. The greatest authority 
on navigation who has lived in this century, the late 
Professor Breusing, devoted much space in his work 
on the navigation of the ancients to a careful study 
of Saint Paul’s voyage as described by the Apostle. 
The fact that Breusing was an eminent philologist as 
well as a mathematician and a navigator, gives great 
weight to his opinions and conclusions. He has de- 
monstrated to the complete satisfaction of all mariners 


that Saint Paul’s story is as accurate an account of 


The Romans 359 


what happened to the ship on which he sailed, as 
could be put together from the log and dead reckon- 





HARBOUR OF MALTA 


ing of a modern sailing vessel on a stormy voyage. 
This being the case, we are obliged to admit that. 


360 The Rulers of the South 


the Apostle’s extraordinary technical correctness must 
have extended to other matters spoken of in his ac- 
count, and the most sceptical unbeliever cannot have 
the smallest ground for doubting that Saint Paul spent 
three days in Syracuse as he himself states. With 
Breusing’s book in hand I have visited the little bay 
at the western end of Malta, ‘where two seas met,’ 
that is to say, close to the channel between Malta 
and Gozo, where the ship was run aground ‘and the 
fore part stuck fast and remained unmovable, but 
the hinder part was broken with the violence of 
the waves. And the soldiers’ counsel was to kill the 
prisoners lest any of them should swim out and escape, 
but the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them 
from their purpose; and commanded that they which 
could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, 
and get to land: and the rest, some on boards, and 
some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came 
to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.’ Thence it 
was that, after spending three months in Malta, Saint 
Paul came to Syracuse in the Castor and Pollux, a 
ship of Alexandria that had wintered on the island. 

The little Maltese cove is unchanged, and on the islet 
before it stands a colossal statue of the Apostle. The 
prudent English administration has fastened to the ped- 
estal a notice warning visitors not to molest the rab- 
bits. All round about, the wild ‘ecballion’ blooms 


under the summer sun, its healing root sucking the 


The Romans 361 


scant nourishment it needs from the stony soil, and 
the ceaseless breeze fans the short wild grass that 
here and there can find a hold. A few fishermen land 
on the rocks below. It is a very lonely, quiet place, 
bathed in the most intense light, and as one pauses 
in the shadow of the great statue it is hard to fancy 
it as it must have been on that wild night so long 
ago, when the surf pounded upon the beach in the 
cove and the spray flew in sheets over the islet, and 
the Apostle, whose grotesque image is a landmark 
now, was in danger of being slain by the Roman sol- 
diers lest he should swim ashore and escape; it is hard 
to think that it can ever have been so cold that the 
shipwrecked saint and the prisoners were very grate- 
ful to the fisher folk for building them a fire, before 
which they dried their garments and warmed them- 
selves. But the blazing island can look black enough 
in winter, and most seamen would rather face the 
ocean in any mood than the Malta Channel in a south- 
west gale. Half the charm of the south is in its 
quick changes from wealth to poverty, from blooming 
garden to sun-bleached desolation, from languorous 
calm to sudden and destroying fury. 

We must take for granted, from the results, much 
that concerns the spreading of Christianity in the 
early centuries, and which can never be known in 
detail. It seems certain that the new faith found very 
favourable ground in Sicily, and if, as some suppose, 


362 The Rulers of the South 


the ultimate conversion of the island proceeded rather 
from Rome than directly from the East, it is neverthe- 
less certain that Sicily was one of the first places 
where the influence was felt. The reason for the 
rapid growth of the religion in the island is not far 
to seek. The objection of Rome to Christianity was 
political, not ethic. Rome was ruled by a despotism, 
and Christianity was distinctly socialistic. In Rome, 
religion and state were very closely allied; the 
Romans were extremely tolerant of all forms of poly- 
theism and theism in which they could detect a 
resemblance to their own religious practices and 
beliefs, in which a visible sacrifice was offered before 
the visible image of a god, and which, though not 
agreeing closely with their own, did not offend them. 
Even the Jews offered sacrifices and had a ceremonial 
upon which the Roman could put an _ interpretation, 
though it was a false one; and the Jews never made 
the smallest attempt to convert heathens to Judaism. 
But the Christians met in secret places, they slew 
no victims on their altars, they regarded all heathen 
sacrifices with abhorrence, they worshipped a man who 
had died the death of a criminal, under accusation 
of stirring up revolt and of blaspheming the deities 
of existing religions, and they whispered that all men 
were born free and should be equal hereafter, a 
tenet which seemed monstrous alike to the despot 
and his subjects. Looking at the matter with such 








. 
' 
y . r “QtrTAT T r arr TA SC\IDRATRIA 
SHORE, LOOKING DOWN THE AT TAORMINA 
: ca s 
. - 
‘ 
= 








j + 
' 
. 
- 
. 
. 
! 
‘ 


yen So 








The Romans 363 


fictitious indifference as a believer can assume for 
the sake of argument, it is certainly not strange that 
the Christians should have been persecuted by the 
government of the Emperors. For that government 
had the most to fear from a general socialistic move- 
ment of the slaves and of the poor. The Romans 
believed, or chose to believe, that the Christians had 
no religion at all, but had formed a vast conspiracy 
for the purpose of overthrowing the government; and 
it is natural that this impression should have been 
created by men who met secretly, who used expres- 
sions that had no meaning to Roman ears, who had 
passwords and signs by which they recognized each 
other even at a distance. It cannot be supposed that 
an ordinary Roman of the early times could under- 
stand what a man meant by touching his forehead, his 
breast, his left shoulder and his right, in a word, by 
crossing himself. The gesture was a secret means of 
recognition; it did not suggest the cross to those who 
saw it, and if any heathens knew what it meant, it can- 
not have suggested. anything but an adherence to the 
revolutionary principles they attributed to Christ, and 
a readiness to die the same death rather than submit 
to existing law and authority. Christianity, therefore, 
suffered much more as a secret society, suspected of 
being an extensive conspiracy against imperial and 
despotic government, than on account of the beliefs 
which it really inculcated; and the persecutions by 


304 The Rulers of the South 


which it was sought to repress it from time to time, 
as it grew more powerful, proceeded from a political 
conviction that it had a tendency to undermine author- 
ity, and not in the least from any prejudice on the part 
of the Romans against a religion different from their 
own. Violent and cruel means were usually taken for 
putting down any insurrection or mutiny. When the 
soldiers of Mummius ran away in the battle with the 
gladiators under Spartacus, the general who next com- 
manded them paraded them all on a meadow and 
ordered every tenth man to be beheaded on the spot. 
At the termination of the same war, when Pompey 
boasted that he finally crushed out the great rebellion, 
he impaled six thousand prisoners on stakes planted 
along the Appian way at regular intervals. After the 
second slave war in Sicily many of the survivors were 
condemned to fight with wild beasts in the circus, 
though they had surrendered on condition that their 
lives should be spared. They slew each other, and 
their leader took his own life, rather than submit to 
what seemed an ignominious death. It would be easy 
to multiply instances of cruelties as great as any in- 
flicted upon the Christians, all of which appeared 
necessary to the Roman government on purely political 
grounds. The fact that the performance of a sacrifice 
was the usual test in the case of the Christians, and 
that they were in actual fact put to death for refusing 
to take part in such a religious ceremony, does not 


The Romans 365 


affect the argument in the least. The martyrs indeed 
refused to sacrifice on purely religious grounds, but the 
Romans condemned them to death with a purely politi- 
cal purpose. The fact of the refusal had no religious 
significance in the eyes of the judges; it was merely 
an irrefragable proof that the accused really and truly 
belonged to a great organization, of which all the 
members were supposed to be bound by the most 
solemn oaths to die rather than to submit to authority 
in that shape. An almost exactly parallel case has 
happened in Russia, in our times, when a Christian 
sect bound itself not long ago to refuse any military 
service whatsoever, because all war, for which all 
military service is intended, is contrary to the spirit 
of Christianity. The Russian government naturally 
refused to regard the matter in the same light, and 
severe penalties were inflicted upon men who were 
convinced that they were suffering something like mar- 
tyrdom for a religious cause, by a government which 
was equally persuaded that they wished to defy its 
authority. The logic of these facts, while it demon- 
strates that a very unfair amount of odium has fallen 
upon the imperial government of Rome for its action 
with regard to Christianity, does not in the least detract 
from the glory of those who suffered. Moreover, as 
has doubtless occurred in almost every country where 
it has been thought necessary to enforce unusual and 
rigorous measures, it often happened that the officials 


366 The Rulers of the South 


who were designated to execute them made use of their 
power to satisfy their lust, their greed, or their desire 
for vengeance, and that those whom they condemned 
became the victims not only of their own devotion to 
their faith, as well as of political necessity, but also 
of the passions that individually animated their un- 
scrupulous judges. It may well be doubted whether 
the most enlightened government would tolerate the 
existence of a secret organization of such dimensions 
and importance as were attained by Christianity in the 
early centuries of the Empire, if that organization 
manifested its beliefs by refusing to conform with some 
generally accepted regulation or practice. 

Justice therefore requires that, without at all depre- 
ciating the merit of those early Christians who suf- 
fered themselves to be torn to pieces and tortured 
in a thousand ways for the true faith, we should 
also admit that the government which inflicted such 
sufferings was acting, to the best of its knowledge, 
for the preservation of law and order. 

- But, as in all cases where an elaborate system for 
the maintenance of power throughout an immense 
territory comes into conflict with a movement directed 
and sustained by the mainsprings of human nature, 
the latter was destined to get the mastery in the 
end, and in the course of a few centuries the whole 
Roman Empire was practically Christianized. The 
most remarkable fact in connexion with this universal 


The Romans 307 


change of belief is that, although a great number of 
Christians were at one time or another put to death, 
there was at no period of the development any 
open struggle which could be called a religious war, 
such as devastated Europe in the sixteenth century, 
when kingdoms and principalities that believed more 
or less the same things fought each other to the 
death because they chose to believe the same things 
in different ways. After Constantine had accepted 
Christianity without imposing it by force, Julian the 
Apostate rejected it without proscribing it or perse- 
cuting it. Neither Mary of England nor Elizabeth 
acted with such moderation under similar circum- 
stances. Constantine was too wise and good a Chris- 
tian, sentimental though he was and always remained, 
to shed innocent blood in the hope of spreading the 
gospel of peace; Julian understood the nature of 
Christianity too well to suspect it of being a con- 
spiracy against the Empire. The unbeliever did not 
exhibit the senseless rage of the Puritan and Huguenot 
iconoclasts; the believer was far above the bigotry of 
a Catherine de’ Medici-or a Philip the Second. 

It is not necessary to depreciate the qualities, such 
as they were, which made Rome’s domination a means 
of civilizing the known world, in order to exalt the 
merits of the Christian martyrs, whose constancy to 
an absolutely pure faith and whose sufferings in its 
cause justly earned them the title of the Holy for all 


368 The Rulers of the South 


time; any more than it would be just to’disparage the 
saintliness of many who, in later ages, would have 
borne as much for the same cause, if it had been 


condemned to the same persecution. Christianity was 


most persecuted in those centres of the vast Empire 





AMANTEA, WESTERN CALABRIA 


where it was believed to be a source of greatest danger 
to the government; and while many suffered, many 
also took refuge in the quiet of the provinces, so that 
it is not unreasonable to believe that a great number 
of Christians escaped to Sicily after the great perse- 
cution of Nero; and if they were not the founders 
of the Church in the island, they were probably the 


The Romans 369 


first active propagators of the faith who laboured there. 
We hear of a number of atrocious martyrdoms in 
Sicily, it is true. The heartrending stories of Saint 
Agatha and Saint Lucy are too horrible to be told; 
but the atrocities therein recorded are referable directly 
to the evil passions of corrupt officials, and do not seem 
to have formed parts of extensive persecutions. The 
laws against Christians often remained inactive for 
long periods at a time, and were then suddenly 
unearthed from obscurity and put into force by gov- 
ernors and prefects as a means of extorting money, or 
of gratifying worse desires, precisely as happened many 
centuries later in Christian Europe with regard to the 
laws against the Jews. The first Sicilian martyrdoms 
of which there is a certain record known to me took 
place in 164, under Marcus Aurelius, who was certainly 
not a.persecutor. The: martyrs were Victor and 
Corona. The next fell under Decius, about 250, when 
Saint Agatha and three others were put to death. 
In Diocletian’s reign, and therefore at least as late as 
284, seventy-five Christians were martyred in Sicily ; 
in 307 took place the horrible tragedy of Saint Lucy 
in Syracuse, and Saint Nympha was executed in 310, 
after which no further martyrdoms are recorded. 
Compared with the wholesale butcheries of Christians 
in Rome such a list is insignificant, including as it 
does eighty victims in the space of one hundred and 
_ forty-six years. 


VOL. I 2B 


370 The Rulers of the South 


It is not hard to understand that during the long 
peace enjoyed by Sicily, which extended practically 
from the beginning of our era to the year 440, the 
island should have been completely and homogeneously 
Christianized. About the year 280 Syracuse was 
plundered by a body of roving Franks who had stolen 
a few Roman men of war, but it was not till a hundred 
and sixty years later that Sicily was laid waste by the 
Vandals under Genseric. The West Goths had already 
taken possession of Italy. Alaric had thrice success- 
fully besieged Rome, and at last had sacked the city; 
and then, by southern Cosenza, he had suddenly died, 
and his men had buried him in the bed of the river and 
had turned the stream again over his resting-place. He 
was a Christian, but an Arian. Had he lived, he 
would have conquered Sicily and his rule might have 
been good, for in peace he was just and merciful. But 
Sicily fell to Genseric, another Arian who came over 
from Africa, breathing religious hatred against Chris- 
tians of all other denominations. The heresy of Arius 
called into question the equality of God the Son with 
God the Father; the orthodox bishops had condemned 
it, and the followers of its originator longed for 
revenge. The result was a persecution of the orthodox 
Christians such as perhaps did not take place in Sicily 
under the’ Empire. Theodosius, indeed, made an 
effort to rescue the island, but the Huns were upon 


him, and he turned away to defend dominions nearer 


The Romans 371 


home. The Arian Vandals retired, leaving destruction 
behind them, and when, on their way to plunder Rome 
itself, they attempted to land in Sicily a second time, 
they were repulsed. But not for long. In 456 they 
fought a great battle against the Romans near Girgenti 
and were beaten; yet the peace that had followed did 
not save Sicily from further devastations. A few years 
later Genseric overcame and destroyed the Byzantine 
fleet, and it was not until the Vandals had laid waste 
all the coasts of Italy and Sicily during seven years 
more, and had possessed themselves of a large part 
of the island, that peace ensued at last. It-was not 
even a peace between the invaders and the Empire, 
for the Empire was dying in the feeble hands of the 
last Emperor of the West, whose name, Romulus Augus- 
tulus, seemed to recall Rome’s regal and imperial 
beginnings, and to denote her fall in the puerile diminu- 
tive terminations. The peace was concluded between 
Vandals and Goths, between Genseric and Odoacer, 
who agreed to pay the Vandals a yearly sum, as it 
were, for the use of Sicily as a granary. 

With this peace of 475 the story of the Romans 
reaches its natural conclusion, since there was to be 
no Rome again in the old sense for many years, not 
even when Charles the Great had gathered together 
the fragments of broken tradition, the remnants of 
forgotten glory, and the shreds of dismembered em- 


pire, to weld and solidify the whole into something 


ee The Rulers of the South 


that was to last a thousand years, which was to call 
itself the Holy Roman Empire, but which was never 
again to rule the world from the Palace of the 
Cesars. The next Rome was ‘to be the sRomeme: 
the popes. About five hundred years elapsed between 
the flight of Sextus Pompeius and the peaceable acces- 





ROCCA IMPERIALE, EASTERN CALABRIA 


sion of Odoacer the East Goth. During that time 
Sicily had for the most part remained in her old 
tributary position as the granary in chief to the 
capital; and the far descendants of the slaves who 
had ploughed and sown the land for Rome, in the 
days of Augustus, were Christian bondsmen tilling 
the same soil for a Gothic king. The moral change 


The Romans eye 


had been profound and enduring, the material differ- 
ence in the conditions of the population in the one 
period and in the other was insignificant. Christianity 
was a moral force, but not then a practical civilizer. 
Its spreading had been accompanied by a retrogres- 
sion which it had not caused, but which it was power- 
less to hinder, and with the stern Roman rule, which 
had so often tried in vain to stamp the new faith 
out of existence, there had disappeared also the 
Roman organization and discipline, and orderly dis- 
tribution of wealth, which, by their civilizing influence, 
should go far to redeem the empire from the con- 
tempt of modern times, if not from the execration of 
ecclesiastical writers. 

Until the Vandal invasion the island was not less 
fertile than before, and the depredations of Genseric’s 
horde can only have produced one of those tem- 
porary interruptions in the agricultural activity of the 
country which I have more than once compared to 
a suspension of work in a great factory. But the 
cities had suffered much and continually, ever since 
Verres had carried off their treasures and stolen their 
wealth, and with the gradual diminution of superfluous 
ready money, the power of beautifying the cities had 
diminished and disappeared; a further reduction of 
resources had made it impossible to restore monu- 
ments and public buildings which had been injured 


by time; and at last the total absence of means had 


aan The Rulers6r ther south 


resulted in that state of things which any one may 
see at the present day in the Ottoman Empire. As 
in Constantinople in our own times, so it was in 
Syracuse, in Palermo, in Girgenti, and in Messina, in 
the days of the Gothic kingdom. For lack of ready 
money, the Turk looks on indifferently, while some of 
the most beautiful buildings now existing fall to pieces 
from sheer neglect, while a fleet of modern war-ships 
rusts and rots at anchor in the Golden Horn, while 
an empire which should be fertile lies fallow for lack 
of capital. If Cicero found the tomb of Archimedes 
hidden in a wilderness of brambles, it needs no lively 
fancy to imagine what Syracuse had become in the 
days of Odoacer the Goth. It was the duty of Sicily 
to raise corn, and it was her only business to see that 
it was safely shipped to Italian ports. She had 
become accustomed to a condition of servitude in 
which her labour was as poorly paid as was con- 
sistent with the existence of her population; she sent 
out merchandise by the thousand shiploads, but had 
neither the power to exact payment for it nor to refuse 
what was demanded of her. The cities became mere 
places for embarking cargo, safe harbours lined with 
docks and quays, the almost imperishable work of 
Roman engineers, surrounded by granaries that were 
sometimes beautiful disused temples, by the offices 
of the corn-factors, and by the miserable habitations 


of the dock slaves, longshoremen, and sailors, who did 


> 


THE THEATRE OF TAORMINA 








Dah ae 
“ ? a 


Ss } 





i 





The Romans a6 


the work of the port. From time to time, perhaps, 
a strolling company of Greek players gathered a little 
audience in the theatre where Dionysius, Hiero, and 
the beautiful Philistis had listened to the deathless 
verses of Sophocles and Euripides; and the _ poor 
actors gave garbled versions of great plays that were 
ill tolerated by the heathen-hating bishops, but which 
perhaps touched the long-lost chords of memory in 
those who heard. For the most part the theatre was 
deserted, and the grass grew in the wide market- 
place round the ruins of Timoleon’s tomb.  Chris- 
tianity, bred in the subterranean galleries and cham- 
bers of Achradina, had risen to the surface like a 
young plant in spring, and stretching out its tendrils, 
was appropriating to itself all that it found in its 
way; it was turning temples into churches, and race- 
tracks into cemeteries, and theatres into places of 
public prayer; but as yet it had not come to its 
flowering nor acquired an outward esthetic beauty 
of its own. Where cities were going to decay, faith 
alone was not able to rebuild them, and the Church 
was content to lead a peaceable and austere existence 
among ruins. 

The business of Sicily was not commerce in the 
true sense, and brought with it none of the rewards 
of commercial enterprise. It was the business of 
supply carried on under compulsion and without profit. 
Yet it did not at any time wholly cease; the value of 


PG 


376 The Rulers of the South 


the island to him who could hold it was, potentially, 
as great as ever; Sicily never became a desolate and 
fever-stricken waste like the Roman Campagna, the 
Pontine marshes, or the plain where Sybaris ‘once 
bridged the river. The Greeks had made it, the 
Romans had used it, barbarians and pirates of many 
lands had plundered it, but its vitality was indestruc- 
tible, and the springs of its ever renewed prosperity 
could not be dried up. It was yet to be, what it had 
been for more than a thousand years, the garden of 
the Mediterranean, the chief jewel in Italy’s crown, 
and the coveted possession and treasure of each race 
that strove for it and held it for a while against the 


world. ‘ 


Gro NOLOGICAL LABLE 


B.C. 
1200 (about) 


800 (about) 


735 
734 
ay 
715 
ches Cea 
700 (about) 


700 (about) 
700 (about) 
700 (about) 


700 (about) 
690 
648 
ROO tee Lok 
570 (about) 
485 
480 
478 
473 
468 
467 


VOLUME I “ 


Farming developed by the Sicelians. 

Cume founded by the Greeks. 

Naxos founded by the Chalcidians. 

Syracuse founded by the Corinthians. 

Sybaris founded by the Achzans. 

Crotona founded by the Achzans. 

Tarentum founded by Spartans, called Partheniz. 


Catania, Leontini, and Zancle founded by Chal- 
cidians and Jonians. . 


Megara Hyblaa founded by the Dorians. 
Rhegium founded by the Messenians. 


Metapontum, Poseidonia, and Terina founded by 
the Achaans. ) 


Selinus founded by Dorians from Megara. 
Gela founded by Dorians from Rhodes. 
Himera founded by Ionians. 

Akragas founded by Dorians. 

Pythagoras born at Samos. 

Gelon becomes tyrant of Syracuse. 

Hamilcar of Carthage besieges Himera. 

Hiero succeeds Gelon as tyrant of Syracuse. 
Pindar visits the court of Hiero. 

Death of Hiero and accession of Thrasybulus. 


Simonides dies at Syracuse. 
377 


378 
BG 


465 


456 
415 
413 
409 
406 


406 


405 
397 
395 


367 
356 


353 
346 
343 


Chronological Table 


Syracuse, Akragas, etc., become independent 
commonwealths. 


Ducetius heads a rising of Sicelians. 
“Eschylus dies at Gela. 


Athenian expedition against Syracuse, led by 
Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus. 


The Syracusans, led by Gylippus the Spartan, 
defeat the Athenians. 


The Carthaginians, led by the second Hannibal, 
take Selinus and Himera. 

Hermocrates returns from exile, and is killed at 
Syracuse. 

Hannibal dies of the plague, and Akragas sur- 
renders to his father Himilcon. 

Dionysius becomes tyrant of Syracuse. 

Dionysius declares war against Carthage. 


Dionysius defeats the Carthaginians and destroys 
their fleet. 


Death of Dionysius, and accession .of his son, 
Dionysius II. 


Dionysius II. dethroned by his brother-in-law, 
Dion. 


Dion assassinated by Callippus. 
Second tyranny of Dionysius II. 


Timoleon deposes Dionysius II. and interrupts 
the tyranny. 


Timoleon defeats the Carthaginians. 
Death of Timoleon. 

Agathocles makes himself tyrant. 
Death of Agathocles. 

Archimedes born. 


Pyrrhus, called in by the Syracusans, defeats the 
Carthaginians. 


Pyrrhus leaves Sicily. 


NO 
ON 
iS) 


260 
255 


254 
253 
242 
215 
213 
212 


212 


210 


139 
132 


104 


99 


79 
73 


(about) 


Chronological Table 379 


Hiero II. made king of Syracuse. 
Theocritus is at the court of Hiero. 


The Mamertines appeal from Messina to Rome 
for aid. 

First Punic war begins, called in Rome “the 
Sicilian war.” 

The Romans besiege Akragas, thenceforth known 
as Agrigentum. 

First Roman fleet built. 


The Romans, led by Regulus, are totally defeated 
by the Carthaginians. 


The Romans take Drepanon, thenceforth known 
as Drepanum. 


The Romans lose a fleet. 
The Romans take Lilybzum. 


Hiero II. dies, and is succeeded by his grandson, 
Hieronymus. 


The Romans massacre the inhabitants of Henna. 
Syracuse taken by Marcellus. 


Archimedes slain by a common soldier after the 
fall of Syracuse. 


The Romans take Agrigentum, and Sicily becomes 
a Roman province. 


Scipio of Africa assembles his fleet at Lilybaeum 
before the battle of Zama. 


Sicilian slaves revolt against the Romans. 


Publius Rupilius, the consul, puts down the first 
servile insurrection. 


Insurrection in Campania led by the knight 
Vettius. 


Manlius Aquillius, the consul, finally crushes 
out the servile revolts. 


Cicero is questor in Sicily. 
Verres obtains the propretorship of Sicily by lot. 


380 


B.C, 
70 
47 


43 
39 


126 


Chronological Table 


Verres is tried in Rome, and retires to Marseilles. 


Julius Caesar assembles his fleet at Lilybaeum for 
his African campaign. 


Sextus Pompeius becomes master of all Sicily. 


Treaty between Sextus Pompeius, Octavian, and 
Mark Antony signed at Baie. 


Sextus Pompeius expelled by Octavian. 


Augustus, formerly Octavian, visits Sicily. 


Saint Pancras, first bishop of Sicily, said to have 
been ordained by Saint Peter. 


Hadrian visits Sicily. 
Saint Victor and Saint Corona martyred under 
Marcus Aurelius. 


Saint Agatha and three others martyred by the 
pretor Quintianus. 


Syracuse plundered by roving Franks. 
Seventy-five Christians martyred under Diocletian. 
Saint Lucy martyred at Syracuse under Galerius. 
Saint Nympha martyred under Galerius. 
Alaric the Goth dies at Cosenza in Calabria. 
Sicily laid waste by the Vandals under Genseric. 
The Vandals defeated by the Romans near Agri- 
gentum. 


Peace concluded between the Vandals and Goths 
under Genseric and Odoacer. 


INDEX 


Abas, ii. 77-78 

Abul Kare, 11. 198 

Acestes, i. 5 

Achradina, i. 95 

Aci Castello, i. 6 

Actzon, i. 37 

Adelasia, ii. 250 

Adenulf of Aquino, 1i. 158 

Adernd, i. 199 

Admetus, 1. 264 

Adrianus, Patrician, ii. 10o-1or 

Adverarda, ii. 169 

fEneas, i. 6 

fEschylus, i. 83-85, 183 

/Etna, city of, i. 87, 97, 98, 100 

Etna, nymph, i. 3, 4 

Agatha, Saint, i. 369 

Agathias, il. 35-36 

Agathocles, i. 13, 39, 76, 207-226; ii. 114 

Aghlab, ii. 75, 109 

Agriculture — 
in Sicily, development of, by Sicelians, 

1,50 
in time of Pope Gregory the Great, il. 
52-53 

under Augustus Cesar, i. 342-344 
under Hiero the Second, i. 236 
under Roman domination, i. 289 
under the Vandals, i. 373 


Agrigentum, i. 37, 250, 255, 283. See 
Akragas 

Akragas, -1. “37, 79, 101, 1s9-162, See 
Agrigentunt 


Alardo, ii. 311 
Alaric, i. 143 ii. 370 
Alaymo, li. 325-326 
Alcestis, i. 264 
Alcibiades, i. 93, 104, 107-117, 126--127, 351 
Alexander the Great, i. 76, 238, 261 
Alexandrian, the ship, i. 238, 261 
‘ Alexiad,’ the, ii. 164 
Alfonso of Aragon, ii. 344 

the Magnanimous, ii. 348 
' © All-harbour,’ the, i. 71 
Alpheius, 121 


Alps, Hannibal crosses, i. 269 
Amalafrida, il. 3 
Amalasuntha, il, 11 
Amalfi, ii. 141 
Amari, ii. 73, 200, 241, 248, 271, 277, 290 
Amasis, 1. 50, 52, 54 
Anacreon, 1. 46, 47 
Anapus, i. 119, 121, 261-263 
Anastasius the Librarian, ii. 112 
Anaxilas of Rhegium, i, 70, 78 
Anaximander, i. 48 
Ancona, il. 27, 273 
Andreas, ii. 59 
Andrew of Hungary, ii. 337-341 
‘ Angels, not Angles,’ 11. 43 
Angelus, Bishop of Troia, ii. 148 
‘Annals of Aragon,’ ii. 350 
Anne of Austria, il. 270, 336 
Anselm of Canterbury, ii. 249 
Antandros, i. 223 
Antiochus, 1. 299. See Eunus 
Antiochus, governor of Sicily, i. 65 
Antipope — 
Anacletus, ii. 260, 261 
Benedict, ii. rg1, 194 
Honorius, ii. 236 
John of Velletri, ii. 190 
Antony, Mark, i. 231, 338-342 
Anxur, i. 8 
Apennines, battle of the, ii. 28 
Aphrodite, i. 330; il. 55 
Apollo, 1. 34, 198; 1. 55 
Apollonius, i. 307 
Apparitors, i. 288 
Aprile, Francesco, ii. 345, 348 
Apulia, i. 21, 146-154; il. 246 
Aquila, ii. 297, 303 
Aquillius, Manlius, i. 311-312 
Aquino, Count of, it. 186-187 
Arabs, Sicily taken by, to 
lack of social constitution, i. 22 
Archias of Corinth, 1. 37, 242 
Archifred, ii. 231 
Archimedes, 1. 13, 238-242, 277, 278, 282 
tomb of, i. 320 
Archytas, i. 190 


351 


382 


Ardoin, ii. 142, 145 
Arete, 1. 190 
Arethusa, the spring, i. 120; i. 82 
Argirizzo, li, 219, 223, 224 
Argyros, il. 151 ff., 173 ff., 217 
Ariminum, 1. 271. 
Arisgot of Pozzuoli, il. 233 
Aristomache, 1. 193 
Aristotle, i. 9, 63; il. 118 
Arius, i. 370 
Art— 
Barocco, 11. 360-361 
Egyptian, i. 41 
first developraent of, in Sicily, i, 87 
Saracen-Norman, li. 254-257 
Artabanes, il. 28 
Artemis, 1. 3 
temple of, i. 6 
Ascoli, i. 1477 
Ased, il. 72-73 
Ashtaroth, 1. 70, 263 
Athalaric, 11. 4, 5, 11 
Athenzus, 1. 82 
Athene) 1.3311 55 
Athenio, i. 309-312, 314 
Athens, 105-107 
Athletes, Greek, i. 43 
Atossa, 1. 54 
Attalus, i. 305 
Attila, i. 2 
Aubert, Bishop, ii. 126 
Aufidus, i. 271 
Augusta, harbour of, 1. 36 
Austrasians, ii. 15 
Austria, Duke of, ii. 311-314 
Autharis, il. 37 
Aversa, il. 137, 145, 339, 343 


B 
Baal, 1. 263 
Baal-Moloch, i. 2 
Babylon, 1. 42 
Bacchylides, 1. 80, 82 
Baiz, treaty of, i. 340 
Balbus, Michael, 11. 71 
Barbarossa, Emperor, il. 272-273, 279 
Pirate, il. 354, 358 
Barbatus, Saint, ii. 58 
Bari, il. 131, 173, 214, 216, 219-225 
Barletta, 11. 350,351, 352 
‘Barocco’ art, il. 360, 361 
Basil, Emperor, 11. 100, 102. 106 
of Gerace, il. 208 
Basle, ii. 290 
Batiatus, Lentulus, 1. 332 
Bayard, Chevalier, ii. 351, 356 


Index 








Beatrice, ii, 188 

Bel, temple of, i. 42 

Belgium, i. 236 

Belisarius, ii. 4, 6, 11--16, 18-21, 24 

Belshazzar, 1. 55 

Beltram, il. 339, 342 

Ben Arwet, 11. 241, 242, 244, 246-247 

Benedict the Tenth. See A ntzpope Benedict 

Benevento, ii. 171, 307, 308 

Beneventum, Pyrrhus defeated at, i. 228, 250 
destroyed, ii. 17 

Bentley, 1. 62 

Bernard of Clairvaux, ii. 261-262 

‘ Besieger of Cities,’ i. 224 

Bessas, ii. 19-21 


| Bishops, ii. 50 
| Bisignano, it. 168 


Bizanzio, ii. 219 

Black Bands, the, ii. 356 

Blanche of Navarre, ii. 344, 346, 362 

30ethius, ii. 10, 99 

Bohemund of Antioch, ii. 
250 

Bomilcar, i. 219 

‘ Beok of Roger,’ il. 265 

Bordeaux, ii. 329, 330, 331, 332 

Bourbons, the, ii. 270, 336, 359 

Bouvines, battle of, ii. 290 

Braccio del Salvatore, ii. 200 

Breusing, Professor, i. 243, 358-360 

Bridport, Lord, i. 293 

Brigandage, 1. 294-295, 343; il. 379-383 

Brindisi, ii. 220 

Bronté, i. 3, 2933 11. 47-48 

Brotherhood, Pythagorean, i. 
305 

Buatére, Gilbert, ii. 131 

Buddha, i. 44, 51 

Buffon, i. 241 

Burgundians, ii. 15 

Butera, taken by Saracens, ii. 75, 248 


195, 239, 246, 


58-61, 68, 


Le 


Cabrera, Bernardo, il. 344-348, 362 
Cacilius of Calacte, i. 346 

Cesar, Augustus, i. 339-343, 345, 352 
Cesar, Julius, i. 338-339 

Calabria, i, 21; il. 246 ff. 
Calascibetta, ii. 203, 204, 242 
Caligula, 1. 345 

Callipolis, i- 69 

Callippus, i. 195 

Cambrai, treaty of, ii. 357 
Cambyses, i. 41, 54, 55 

Camona, i. 68; ii. 363, 368 
Campagna, ii. 14, 195 


Index 


Cannz, i. 269, 271 
battle of (1019), ii. 133, 148 
battles of (1041), ii. 148-150 
Canossa, li. 171 
Capo Colonne, i. 66 
Capo-mafia, ii. 370 
Carcinus, i, 206-208 
Cariati, ii. 193 
Carmel, Mount, i. 51 
Carthage, i. 69, 212 ff. 
destroyed, i. 291 
Caruso, ii. ror 
Cassandra, i. 83 
Cassiodorus, 11. 9-10 
Castor and Pollux, ship, i. 360 
Castrogiovanni, i. 171, 279, 296; il. 203, 211, 
233, 235, 242, 263, 285, 297 
Byzantines defeated by Moslems at, ii.75 
taken by Great Count Roger, ii. 247 
Castrovillari, ii. 248 
Catacombs of Saint Martian, ii. 143 
of San Giovanni, i. 79 
Catania, 1. 97, 98, 171; 11. 11, 240, 244 
coins of, 1. 79 
Catapults, long-range, i. 172 
Cato, Marcus Porcius, i. 338 
aaudexs 1,233 
Cavagnari, Sir Louis, i. 304 
Cefalu, ii. 206 
Cerami, battle of, 11. 211-212, 214 
Cerignola, battle of, ii. 352 
Chaleis, 1. 35 
Chaldzans, i. 49 
Charlemagne, 1. 371; ii. 65, 67, 68, 297 
Charles the First of Anjou, i. 10, 14, 16; ii. 
269, 270, 291, 293, 298, 299, 
302-333 
Second of Anjou, ii. 333 
Constable of Bourbon, ii. 355, 356, 
ays 
of Durazzo, ii. 338, 342, 343 
the Fifth, Emperor, ii. 335, 352-359 
Second of France, the ‘ Bald,’ 
li, 128 
Third of France, the ‘ Simple,’ 
i, 103 ili. 127 
Eighth of France, ii. 349 
Christianity, introduction and influence, i. 
351-372 
‘ Chronicon Sicilum,’ the, ii. 75 
* Ciceri,’ ii. 321 
Cicero, i. 315, 320, 323, 335-338 
Civil wars, Roman, i. 316 
Civitate, ii. 179, 181 
Claudius, Appius, i. 232-233 
Caius, i. 232 


383 


Cleo, i. 300, 302 
Clodius, Sextus, i. 346 
Clytemnestra, i. 83 
Cologne, Archbishop of, ii. 134 
Coloni, ii. 52 
Colonna, the, ii. 282, 336-337 
Prospero, ii. 351 
Vittoria, il. 356 
Colossus of Rhodes, i. 260 
‘Columna rostrata,’ i. 253 
Comanus, 1. 302 
Commerce — 
introduced to Sicily by Phoenicians, i. 9 
in time of the Vandals, 1. 375 
under Hiero the Second, i. 236-237 
Comnena, Anna, ii. 164-166 
Confucius, i. 44, 51 
Conrad the Third, Emperor, ii. 140, 154 
Fourth, Emperor, ii. 269, 295, 
298, 299 
Fifth, ‘ Conradin,’ Emperor, ii. 
269, 301, 302, 303, 309-314 
Constance of Hauteville, ii. 251, 268, 278, 
282, 284-286 
Constans the Second, ii. 57-59 
Constantine, Emperor, i. 352, 367 
the Third, Emperor, ii. 59-60 
Constantinople, i. 10; ii. 8, 151, 217, 254 
Coral, i. 21 
Corcyra, i. 224 
Cordova, Gonzalvo de, ii. 349, 352, 361 
Corfu, i. 224 
Corsicayi.) 12 
Cosenza, ii. 215, 248 
Cossus, Aulus Cornelius, i. 275 
Cotrone. See Crotona 
‘Count of the Patrimony of Italy,’ ii. 38 
Counts in Sicily, ii. 4-5 
Crassus, 1. 334 
Cremona, ii. 290 
Crimisos, 1. 5 
Croesus, 1. 50 
Cromwell, Oliver, ii. 99 
Crotona, 1. 43, 64-66, 80 
founded, 1. 37 
plundered by Agathocles, i. 224 
tributary to Gelon, i. 76 
Crusade — 
Children’s, 11. 292-293 
First, ii. 249-250, 253-254 
Fourth, ii. 287 
Second, ii. 263 
Seventh, ii. 315 
Cuba, the, ii. 284 
Cume, i. 26, 78; ii. 35 
naval battle off, i. 341 


384 


Curazzo, Abbot of, ii. 282 
Curtiusyie352 
Cutrera, Antonio, il. 365 ff. 
Cyclops, 1. 6 
Cyrus, i. 41, 54 
D 
Dedalus, i. 4 
Dahn, Felix, it. 10, 12, 23 
Damarete, 1. 75 
Damas, 1. 208 
Damon and Pythias, i. 185 
Damophilus, i. 297, 298 
Darius, 1. 41, 54 
Decius, i. 369 
Delarc, Abbé, ii. 127, 129-131, 146, 239, 250 
Delos, i. 292 
Demeter, 1. 2, 197 
Demetrius of Macedonia, 1. 22 
Demosthenes, i. 137, 140, 142-145 
Descartes, i. 303 
Desclot, Bernat, 11. 324, 332 
Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, il. 191, 
236, 237 
‘Deus ex machina’ 
lus, 1. 84 
‘Die Nautik der Alten,’ i. 243 
Digby, Everard, 11. 100 
Dinocrates, i. 220, 223-224 
Diocletian, i. 369 
Dion, i. 188-195 
Dionysius the Elder, i. 13, 16, 39, 86, 162- 
187 
Second, i. 185, 187-190, 192, 
199 
Dolabella, i. 321, 322 
Doria, Andrea, ii. 356 
Drepanon, 1. 2 
Drepanum, naval battle at, i. 252 
Drogo; 11.9130) tie, 250, OO dist 2 
Drouet, 11. 320 
Ducetius, i, 100-101 
Duilius; 1. 252, 253 
Durazzo, ll. 215, 216, 245 
Charles of, 11. 338, 342, 343 


originated by A%schy- 


E 
Ear of Dionysius, i. 184 
Kast India Company, Greeks in the south 
compared to, 1. 38-39 
Ecnomus, Mount, i. 213 
naval battle off, i. 254 
Edrisi, ti. 265 
Egesta, 1. 5 
Egypt, civilization of, i. 41 
Elymos, 1. 5 
Enna, i. 3 








Index 


Entebla, i. 201, 202 
Epicharmus, i. 83 
Epipole, 171 
Eremberga, ii. 205, 250 
Eryx, Mount, i. 2, 6, 173, 176 
Este, chronicle of, ii. 339 
Eumenides, 1. 85 
Eunus, i. 297-302 
Euphemius, 11. 71-74 
Euphrates, 1. 42 
Euripides, i. 150 
Euryalus, fortress of, ii. 115 
Evisand, ii. 244 
Exainetos, 1. 159 
F 
Falcandus, ii. 276 
Faro, ul. 143 
Fatimites, il. 109 
Fer, Hugo, ii. 292, 293 
Ferdinand of Aragon, the ‘ Just,’ ii. 345, 
349 
the Catholic, i. 10; ii. 270, 335, 
52 
First of Naples, ii. 344 
Festival and Games of Freedom, i. 97 
Feudal system, iil. 139-140, 251 
Field of Blood, ii. 133 
Fieramosca, Ettore, il. 351 
Fiorentino, Castel, ii. 296, 297 
First Punic war, i. 231-236, 249-260 
Flamma, M. Calpurnius, 1. 253 
Florence, ii. 303, 362 
Francis the First of France, ii. 354, 355, 356, 
358 
Frangipane, il. 311 
Franks, ii. 28, 37 
Frederick of Aragon, ii. 314 
the First, ‘ Barbarossa,’ Emperor, 
ll. 272-273, 279 
Second, Emperor, i. 13; ii. 
267, 286 ff., 298 
Second of Sicily, ii. 270 
Froudsberg, ii. 357 


G 
Gaeta, ii. 290, 352 
Gaillard, M. H., ii. 355 
Galera, ii. 191, 194 
Garganus, il. 124 
Garibaldi, 11. 222, 270, 373 
Gauls, i. 234 
Gela, 1. 8, 37, 69 
Gellias of Akragas, i. 159-162 
Gelon, son of Hiero the Second of Syracuse, 
i. 268, 272 
tyrant of Syracuse, 1. 39, 69 ff., 75-76 


Index 385 


Genoa, ii. 290 Henry the Second, Emperor, ii. 133-136 
Genseric, i. 14, 370, 371; ii. 2,5, 8 Third, the ‘ Black,’ Emperor, ii. 
George of Antioch, admiral, ii. 263, 264 161-163, 170 ff., 189 

Saint, ii. 212 Fourth, Emperor, ii..189, 192, 
Georgius Cedrenus, ii. 100-101, 107 246, 253, 278 
Gerace, ii. 207 Sixth, Emperor, ii. 267, 269, 282- 
Gerami, ii, 211-212 285 
Gerard, ii, 168-169, 178 Eighth of England, ii. 354, 355, 
Gherardesca, Ugolino della, ii. 312 358 


Gibbon, ii. 12, 40, 260, 261 Heraclides, i. 191, 192, 194 
Gildilas, ii. 5 Herme, mutilation of the, i. rro-111 
Girgenti, i. 37; ii. 74, 204, 213, 247 Hermocrates, i. 104, 145, 157-158 
Gisulf, ii. 175, 195-196 Hermodamas, i. 45, 57 
Gladiators, revolt of, i. 332-334 Hesione, i. 5 
Godfrey, son of Judith of Evreux, ii. 250 Hiero of Syracuse, i. 78, 86, 93 
Golden Shell, the, i. 71; ii. 113, 116, 226 the Second, i. 86, 228 ff., 260-261, 272 
Goletta, ii. 357 Hieronymus, i. 272-273 
Gordianus, ii. 42 Hildebrand, ii. 171, 190-191, 194 ff., 236. 
Goths, i. 10, 11, 22-23; ii. 1-35 See Pope Gregory the Seventh 
Gracchi, i. 304 Himera, 1. 3, 37, 66, 71-72 
Gracchus, Caius, i. 317 battle of, 102 
Granary of Rome, Sicily called the, i. 21, destroyed, 156-157 

289; il. 39 Himilcon, 1. 161, 167-169, 174-179 
Grappling-irons, first used, i. 252 Hippo, i. 203 
Grasshoppers, plague of, i. 314 Hippocrates, i. 69 
Great Captain, the, ii. 349 Hippotes, i. 5 
Great Count. See under Roger Hodgkin, ii. 23, 47-49 
Great Schism, ii. 67 Holm, Adolf, i. 8, 28, 67, 112, 182, 185-186, 
Greek Orthodox Church, ii. 67 226, 234, 314-3163 ii. 23 
Gregorius Asbesta, il. 67 Holy Ghost, Church of the, ii. 318, 321 
Grisar, Professor, ii. 47 Horace, i. 14; 11. 123, 255 
Guaimar, ii. 130, 140-141, 153 ff., 174 Hortensius, 1. 321, 334, 336, 337 
Guelphs, ii. 303 Hugh of Jersey, ii. 242 
Guiscard, Robert, ii. 163 ff., 172, 176, 193, Humphrey of Apulia, ii. 139, 142, 172, 

246, 280 176, 183 
Guy of Salerno, ii. 175, 182, 232 Huns, i. 370 
Gylippus, i. 134-146; ii. 74 I 
Ibn-al-Hawwas, ii. 199, 201, 215 
Ibn-at-Timnah, ii. 199, 204, 206, 207 
Ibn-el-Athir, ii, 253 
Ibn Haukal, ii. 116-123, 227 
Ibn Khaldoun, ii. 77, 78 
Ibrahim, ii. 70 
Ibycus, i. 45 
Icetes, i. 199, 203, 204, 226 
Idalian Venus, i. 6 
Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople, ii. 


H 
Hadranum, i. 199 
Hadrian, i. 346 
Hemus, i. 8 
Hallam, i. 58 
Hamilcar, i. 69-73, 201 
Hamilcar Barca, i. 259, 266-267 
Hamud, ii. 247 
Hannibal, the second, i. 154-157 
Hannibal, son of Barca, i. 264, 267 ff. 
* Harbour of God,’ ii. 3 
Harmonia, i. 274 
Harun al Rashid, ii. 108 
Hasdrubal, i. 201 
Heinz, ii 295 
Heliopolis, i. 42, 53 Isabel of England, ii. 299 
Henna, i. 171, 279, 296; ii. 74 Isabella of Aragon, ii. 270 
VOL. I 2c 


67 
‘I Mafiusi di fa Vicari,’ 11. 368 
, Images, war of the, il. 55, 60-66 
Individuality of Greeks, i. 102, 245 246 
Indulph, ii. 35 


Ghibellines, i. 10; ii. 303, 309, 310 Hepheestus, i. 2, 34 
Inessa, 1. 104 


386 


Ischia, i. 26 
Isthmian Games, i. 202 
Italus, i. 9 


4; 

Jacob, Bishop of Catania, 11. 65 
James of Aragon, il. 305 

Majorca, il. 332 
Japanese and Greeks compared, 1. 350 
Joan the First of Naples, ‘Mad Joan,’ il. 

335-344 
Second of Naples, 11. 344 
Joanna of England, ii. 279, 281 
John, grandson of Vitalian, ii. 34 
of Castile, 11. 335 
Procida, ii. 316, 317, 318 
the Moor, ii. 299, 301 
Jourdain, ii. 242, 243, 244, 245, 250 
Judith of Evreux, ii. 205, 209, 250 
Julian the Apostate, i. 367 
Justin, ii. 8-11 
the Second, ii. 42 
Justinian, ii. 6, 11, 15-41, 42, 53 
the Second, ii. 60° 


K 
Kalsa, ii. 227 
Katherine of Aragon, il. 335 
Kasr el Hadid, 11. 77 
Kasr Janna. See Henna 
Khalessah, ii. 118 
Kores1.3 
Kronos, 1. 2 
Kyane, i. 3, 262 
Kylon, i. 60 
L 
La Cava, i. 256 
Lestrygones, i. 2, 34 
Lamachus, i. 114, 115, 117 
Laomedon, i, 5 
Latomia dei Cappucini, i. 147 
Latomie, i. 147, 264, 330 
Lauria, Roger di, li. 332 
Lee, Nathaniel, i. 102 
Legates, i. 288 
Legion, Roman, i. 278 
Leibnitz, i. 303 
Leo the Isaurian, Emperor, 11. 60 
Leontini, i. 69, 79, 103, 104, 171; il. 75 
Lepidus, i. 341-342 
Leptines, i. 174 
Lesbos, 1. 48 
Lewis the Second, king of Franks, 11. 102 
Seventh of France, ii. 263-264 
Ninth of France, ii. 269, 298, 304, 


315 





Index 


Lewis the Twelfth of France, ii. 349, 350 
Thirteenth of France, ii. 270, 336 
Fourteenth of France, ii. 336 

Lilybeum, besieged by Rome, i. 257-258 

Czesar’s fleet at, i. 338 

Lipari, i. 224 

naval battle off, i. 254 

Locusts, plague of, in Sicily, ii, 75 

Logothetes, ii. 15 

Lombards, ii. 28, 37, 63 

Lothair, Emperor, ii. 261 

Louis Napoleon, i. 217 

Lucan, li. 280 

Lucera de’ Saraceni, ii. 294, 297 

Lucy, Saint, i. 369; 11. 144 

Luigi of Taranto, ii. 343 

Luitprand, ii. 64 

Luke, Saint, 1. 358 

Lydia, 1. 50 

Lyons, council of, il. 295 


M 
Mabrica, ii. 216 
‘Mad Joan,’ 11. 335 
Maffiusi, i. 305 
Mafia, i. 68, 292; 11. 363-385 
Magians, i. 49 
Mainon, i. 225, 226 
Majo of Bari, ii. 271, 274 
‘Malmsey,’ ii. 52 
Malta, ii. 78, 248, 270 
‘Malvasia’ grapes, li. 52-53 
Mamercus, 1. 203, 204 
Mamertines, i. 226, 230-231, 292 
Manfred, 11. 269, 295, 299-309 
Maniaces, George, ii. 142, 144-145, 151-154 
Manuel, Emperor, ii. 264, 272 
Marcellus, Marcus Claudius, i. 240, 242, 
275-276, 280-283; ii. 115 
Marcus Aurelius, i. 369 
Mare Morto, i. 341 
Margaret of Navarre, il. 277 
Marius, i. 316, 317, 321 
Markwald of Anweiler, ii. 286, 287, 288 
‘ Marriage of Hebe’ of Epicharmus, i. 83 
Marsala, ii. 3, 233 
Marseilles, 1. 38 
Martian, i. 355, 357-358 
Martin the First of Sicily, ii. 335, 344 
Second of Sicily, ii. 335 
Martorana, Church of the, ii. 255, 361 
Massilia, 1. 38 
Matilda, Countess, ii. 188 
Matthew, Chancellor, ii. 278, 283 
Mausoleum of Hadrian, il. 13, 22 
Mazzara, il. 240, 242 





Index 387 


Medici, Catherine de’, ii. 99 
Giovanni de’, il. 356 
Medina, ii. 54 
Megallis, i. 297, 299 
Megalopolis, i. 216 
Megara Hyblea, i. 36 
Mehdia, ii. 274 
Meles, ii, 131-133 
Melfi, ii. 146, 195, 238 
treaty of, il. 194 
Memphis, i. 42 
Menecrates, i. 341 
Merenptah, i. 9 
Messina, i. 2, 18, 37, 79,3 ii. 279-281, 292 
battle of, i. 230-231 
massacre of French in, ii. 321-322 
occupied by Romans, i. 232-233 
taken by Great Count, ii. 202 
Normans, ii. 143 
Saracens, li. 75 
Metapontum, i. 37 
Metellus, Quintus, i. 257, 336 
Methodius, ii. 65-66 
“ Meurtriére,’ i. 277 
Michael, Patriarch, ii. 180-181 
Milan, ii. 15, 357 
Milazzo, i. 6 
naval battle off, 1. 252 
Mileta, ii. 208 
Mileto, ii. 207 
‘Milk Hill,’ ii. 31 
Milo, i. 60, 64 
Miltas, i. 190 
Minos, i. 4 
Mirabbet, ii. 292, 293 
Misilmeri, battle of, ii. 222 
Mithridates, i. 311 
Mnesarchus, i. 45, 52 
Modica, captured by Saracens, ii. 75 
Mohammed, ii. 53 
the Second, ti. 254 
Mohammedanisn,, ii. 54, 69, 142 ff. 
Moloch, i. 263 
Monasteries in Sicily, ii. 46 
Moncada, John, ii. 345 
Monembasia, ii. 52 
Monotheism, 1. 49 
Monreale, ii. 214, 255, 257, 278 
Monte Cassino, il. 134, 135, 154, 282, 300 
Gargano, ii. 124-126 
Lettere, ii. 29 
Poloso, ii. 216 
‘Morals upon Job,’ ii. 44 
Morgana, i. 16 
Morgantia, i. 279 
Motta Santa Anastasia, ii. 347 





Motye, 1. 173-176 

Mugello, ii. 16 

Miihlberg, battle of, ii. 354 
Mummius, i. 364 

Muntaner, Ramon, ii. 324, 332 
Muratori, il. 297, 299, 302, 322, 342 
Muro, ii. 337 

Murviedro, i. 269 

Myle, i. 6 

Mysteries of the ancients, i. 48 
Mytistratum, 1. 253 





N 


Naples, i. 10, 26; ii. 18, 309, 312 
Narses, li. 6, 27-37 

Naulochus, battle of, 1. 342 
Navy, Norman, ii. 225 

Naxos, i. 31, 36, 69, 171 
Neapolis, i. 95, 119 
Nebuchadnezzar, i. 41 

Nelson, Lord, 121 

Nemours, Duke of, ii. 351, 352 
Nero, i. 368 

Newton, Sir Isaac, i. 303 
Nicetas, il. 90, 99 

Nicias, 108-109, 114, 115, 117, 122-146 
Nicotera, ii. 242, 246 

Noto, ii. 242, 248 

Novello, Guido, ii. 303 
Nympha, Saint, i. 369 





O 


Octavian. See Cesar, Augustus 

Odes, Pindaric, i. 82 

Odoacer, i. 371, 372, 3743 ii. 2, 3, 6-7, 9 

‘C&dipus Tyrannus,’ i. 351 

Ofanto, ii. 133, 271 

Olympic Games, i. 43, 64, 79-80 

Olympius, exarch, ii. 57 

Omerta, ii. 361 

Ophellas, i. 218 

Orations against Verres, i. 315, 320, 323, 
335-338 

Orestes, 1. 6; ii. 2 

Oroetes, i. 55 

Orsini, ii. 317, 336-337 

Ortygia, i. 3, 95, 119, 169 

Ostrogoths, ii. 2 

Otto the Fourth, Emperor, ii. 289 

Ouranos, i. 2 


rE 


Palagonia, i. 308 
Palatine Chapel, the, ii. 255 
Paleologus, ii. 317 


388 


Palermo, i. 16; ii. 11, 258, 362 
Arab life in, 1. 22-23 
besieged by Guiscard, ii. 227-232 
chief city of Sicily, ii. 114 
Emperor Frederick the Second born in, 
11. 285 
in tenth century, 117-124 
taken by Saracens, ii. 75 
Palici, grove of, i. 307-308, 309 
Pancras, Saint, i. 31, 355, 358 
Pandolph the Fourth of Capua, ‘ Wolf of 
the Abruzzi,’ ii. 137, 140-141, 154, 
154 ff., 169 
Panormus, 1. 103, 250, 256 
Papyrus, 1. 42, 119, 121, 261-263; ii. 113 
Parma, battle of, ii. 295 
Parthenon, ii. 255 
Patrimonies, ii. 38-39 
Patrinus, John, ii. 87 
Pavia, il. 38, 58, 290 
battle of, 356 
Paul, Saint, i. 358-360 
Pelagius, ii. 20, 24 
Pelasgians, i. 8 
Peloponnesian War, i. 103 
Perenos, Duke of Italy, ii. 215-216 
Pergamus, i. 305-306 
Pericles, i. 351 
Persephone, i. 3, 197; ii. 203 
Perugia, ii. 22 
Pesaro, ii. 19 
Pescara, Marquis of, ii. 356 
Petalism, law of, i. 99 
Peter the Apostle, i. 353, 356 
Hermit, ii. 254 
Saint, Patrimony of, ii. 38 
Tomb of, ii. 45 
Second of Aragon, ii. 288 
Third of Aragon, i. 10; ii. 269, 314, 317, 
323-333 
Subdeacon, ii. 46-47 
Pezza di Sangue, i. 271 
Pherecydes, i. 48 
Philip the First of France, ii. 251 
Second of France, ‘ Augustus,’ 11. 
280, 290 
Fourth of Spain, ii. 270 
of Hapsburg, ii. 336 
Macedon, i. 185 
Philippi, battle of, i. 339 
Philistis, i. 229 
‘ Philosopher King,’ ii. 291 
Philosophy, of the ancients, i. 49 
of Pythagoras, i. 58, 58-61 
Phoenicia, i. 50 
Photinus, ii. 71 


Index 


Photius, ii. 67, 181 
Phyton, i. 181 
Piana dei Greci, i. 344 
Pierleone, ii. 260, 261 
Pilate, Pontius, i. 354 
Pindar, i. 80, 82-83 
Pirates, Barbary, ii. 354 
. Cilician, and Verres, i. 326-328 
Greek, i. 26 
were slave-traders, i. 292-293 
Pisa, ii, 212, 261 
Pisistratus, 1. 47 
Plato, 1. 63, 188-189 
Plemmyrium, 119 
Pliny, ii. 129 
‘Plus oultre,’ ii. 355 
Pluton, i. 3 
Poetry, lyric, i. 80 
Policastro, il. 215 
Polycrates, i. 45, 46, 52, 55 
Polyphemus, i. 2, 5, 33, 34, 224 
Pompeii, il. 129 
Pompeius, Cneius, i. 317, 338 
Sextus, i. 339-342, 372 
Pope — 
Agatho of Palermo, ii. 60 
Alexander the Second, ii. 212, 236 
Third, i. 272 
Fourth, ii. 303 
Sixth, ii. 350 
enedict the Eighth, ii. 131, 132-136 
Ninth, ii. 161, 170 
Clement the Second, ii. 162-163, 170 
Fourth, ii. 306, 315 
Sixth, ii. 338 
Seventh, ii. 356 
Conon, ii. 60 
Damasus the Second, ii. 170 
Gregory the First, the ‘Great,’ il. 35, 
38 ff., 42 ff, 53 
Second, ii. 63-64 
Sixth, ii. 161 
Seventh, ii. 236, 239. 
Hildebrand 
Ninth, ii. 293, 294 
Honorius the Third, ii. 293 
Innocent the Second, ii. 261 
Third, ii. 286, 287, 289 
Fourth, ii. 299, 301 
John the First, ii. 10, 12 
Leo the Second, ii. 60 
Fourth, ii. 111 
Ninth, ii. 170-173, 
188 
Tenth, ii. 353 
Thirteenth, ii. 111 


See 


176-181, 


Index 


Pope — 

Martin the First, ii. 57-58 
Fourth, ii. 316, 322, 333 
Nicholas the First, ii. 67 
Second, ii. 191 
Third, ii. 317 

Sergius the First, ii. 60 
Stephen the Ninth, ii. 189-190 
Sylvester the Third, ii. 16x 
Urban the Fourth, ii. 303-306 
Victor the Second, ii. 188-189 

Ponte Guiscardo, ii. 209 

Portella di Mare, ii. 378 

Poseidon, i. 2 

Poseidonia, i. 37 

Pretorian cohort, i. 288 

Preetors, 1. 286, 287-288 

Procopius, ii. 23, 24, 30-35 

Proculus, i. 240 

Propretors, i. 286-287, 317-318 

Provincial system, Roman, i. 286-288 

Ptolemy Soter, i. 224 

Punic war, cause of first, i, 231 

* Pyrrhic victories,’ i. 227 

Pyrrhus, i. 14, 224, 226-228 

Pythagoras, i. 44-61 

Pythias, Damon and, i. 185 


Questors, i. 287 


R 
Ragusa, ii. 75 
Rainulf of Aversa, ii. 137, 139 ff., 146, 
153 
Tricanocte, ii. 159-160, 169 
Rametta, li. 143, 202 
Randazzo, i. 3; ii. 326 
Randolph, ii. 157-159 
‘Ransom of Hector,’ i, 186 
Raspe, Henry, ii. 295 
Ravello, ii. 147, 362 
Ravenna, ii. 12, 14 
Raymond, Count of Provence, ii. 245, 251 
Reggio, ii. 23, 183, 196, 247 
Regulus, i. 255, 257, 351, 352; ii. 107 
Renascence, art of the, ii. 359-361. 
René of Anjou, ii. 344 
Répostelle, Guillaume, ii. 131 
Rhegium, i. 37, 76, 180 
Richard of Aversa, ii. 169, 176, 186 
Capua, ii. 191, 235-238 
the First of Normandy, ii. 
139, 205 
Second of Normandy, ii. 131 
Lion-hearted, ii. 279, 280-282 
of San Germano, ii. 277, 278, 283 


138- 








389 


Richer, Abbot, ii. 154-156 
Ricimer, ii. 1-2 
Ricottaro, ii. 369 
Rimini, i. 271 
Ring, Polycrates’, i. 52 
Ritter, 1. 62 
Robert of Bari, ii. 312, 313 
Clermont, ii. 25 
Flanders, ii. 313 
the Second of Normandy, 
‘ Devil,’ ii. 137 
the ‘ Wise,’ ii. 337 
Roeth, i. 62 
Roger Bursa, ii. 239, 246, 259 
the Great Count, ii. 115, 183, 197, 
230 ff., 246-247, 251, 361 
of Hoveden, ii. 280 
King of Sicily, i. 13, 14, 16; ii. 250, 
259-267, 359 
Rollo of Normandy, ii. 127 
Romagna, ii. 245 
olhiomaress i045 ; 
Rome, i. 235, 3453 li. 17 14, 44, 357 
Romulus Augustulus,i 71; ii. 2 
Rossano, ii. 21 
Rupilius Publilius, i. 301-302 


the 


S 
Saguntum, i. 269 
Saint Elmo, lights of, i. 198 
Saint Sophia, mosque of, ii. 119 
Salamis, battle of, i. 41, 74-75, 102 
Salerno, ii. 129 
Salt mines, i. 2t 
Salvius, i. 309-310 
Samnites, i. 234 
Samos, i. 45 
San Germano, ii. 263 
San Giovanni, catacombs of, 1. 355, 356, 357 
San Giovanni degli Eremiti, ii. 318, 321 
San Giuliano, 1. 330 
San Marco, il. 167, 168 
San Pantaleo. i. 174 
Sant’ Agata, ii. 140 
Santa Maria del Carmine, Church of, ii, 
313, 314 
Santa Maria |’ Incoronata, ii. 260 
Saracens, ii. 70-124, 209 
Sardinia, li. 11 
Satyrus, 1. 312, 314 
Scalea, ii. 184-185 
Schisd, Cape, i. 31 
Scipio, Publius, i. 183, 289-291 
Scribonia, i. 340 
Scylla, ii. 196 
Second Punic war, 1. 268-283 


39°" 


Segesta, i. 92-93, 103-107, 222-223 
Selinus, i. 37, 71, 73, 89-90, 154-156 
Seljuks, ii. 217, 263 
Semiramis, gardens of, i. 42 
Sentinum, battle of, i, 234 
Severus, Septimius, 1. 346 
Serlo, il. 211, 233-234 
Sertorius, i. 330 
Slax, il. 273 
Sfida di Barletta, the, ii. 350 
Shelley, i. r21 
Ships of the Greeks, i. 27 
first five-banked, i. 172 
of the Normans, ii. 225 
Sicanians, i. 4, 7 
Sicelians, i. 8, 29, 32 ff., 292 
Sicilian Vespers, i. 10,68; ii. 262, 269, 318-321 
war of the, ii. 321-333 
Sicilian war, i. 232 
Sidon, i. 50, 51 
Sigelgaita, ii. 195, 204, 232, 239, 246 
Sikelos, i. 2 
Simichus, i. 66 
Simonides of Ceos, i. 80-81 
Slave insurrections, 1. 297-312 
Slave-market at Delos, i. 292 
Slavery in Sicily, ii. 52 
Smerdis the Magian, i. 54 
Socratess1. 63 
Sophocles, i. 83 
Spanish Succession, war of, 1. To 
Sparta, Alcibiades at, i. 126-127 
Spartacus, i. 323, 332-334, 364 
Specific gravity discovered, i. 240 
Spinus, ii. 25 
Stabian Castellamare, 1. 18 
Stephen, Bishop of Acerenza, ii. 148 
Stephanos, il. 144-145. 
Sthenius, i. 329-330 
Suffetes, i. 70 
Sulla, i. 316, 321 
Sulphur mines, i. 21 
Sword of Damocles, i. 185 
Sybaris, i. 37, 43, 60, 63, 64 
Sybarites, 1. 64 
Sylvia, ii. 42 
Symmachus, il. ro 
Synod of — 
Chalcedon, ii. 41-42 
Constantinople, ii. 41 
Payiayipetor 
Syracuse, i. 37, 79, 94-96, 101 
besieged by Athenians, 117, 130 ff., 146 
colonized by Corinthians, i. 201 
destruction of, by Moslems, ii. 53, 79 ff , 
II2-113 








Index 


Syracuse — 
taken by Romans, i. 276-283 
under Hiero, 1. 86 


ok 


Tagliacozzo, battle of, ii. 310 
Tancred of Hauteville, ii. 138-139, 267, 270 
Sicily, ii, 279-283 
Taormina, i. 31; ii. 240, 243, 244 
Taranto, ii. 151, 154, 196 
Tarantula spiders, ii. 214 
Tarentum, i. 14, 17, 182 
Tauromenium, i. 31, 66, 302 
‘Taurus, 1. 36 
Teano, Count of, ii. 166° 
Teias, 11. 29, 32-33 
Temple of — 
Aphrodite, i. 343 
Apollo, i. 322 
Artemis, i. 6 
Athene, i. 91-92. 
Bel, i. 42 
Castor and Pollux, 1. 336 
Hera at Crotona, i. 224 
Hera at Girgenti, i. 349 
Idalian Venus, 1. 6 
Licinian Hera, i. 66 
Pallas, i. 322 
Saturn, ii. 255 
Segesta, i. 88, 92, 223 
Temples of — 
Akragas, i. 88 
Selinus, i. 88 
Temples, Phoenician, i. 263-264 
Terina, i. 37 
Termini, 159, 207 
Terracina, i. 8 
Terranova, 1. 213. 
Thales, i. 45, 48, 50 
Theatre of Taormina, i. 346-349 
Thebes, i. 42 
Theocles, i. 29 
Theocritus, i. 13, 16 
Theodora, ii. 19 
Theodora Senatrix, ii. 162 
Theodoric, ii. 2, 3, 6-10, 23, 37 
Theodorus, i. 46, 47, 52 
Theodosius, Emperor, i. 370 
monk, describes siege of Syra- 
cuse, li. 79-98 
Theodotus, ii. 75 
Therme, i. 207 
Theron of Akragas, i. 69, 78 
Thira, 11. 77 
Thrasybulus, i. 94-96 
Thrasydzus, 1. 86-87 


See Gela 


Index 


Thrasimene, battle of, i. 271 
Thucles, i. 29, 36 
Thucydides, i. 9, 110 
‘ Thunder-town,’ the, i 3 
Thymbris, Mount, 1. 36 
Tiberius the Second, Emperor, ii. 44 
Ticinum, ii. 35 
Ticinus, i. 269 
Tiles, books written on, i. 42 
Timocrates, i. 191: 
Timoleon, i. 196-205 
Tivoli, ti. 21 
Toéni, Raoul de, ii. 131, 132 
Tomacelli, ii. 324 
Tomb of — : 
Archimedes, i. 320 
Saint Peter, ii. 45 
Tombs, Greek and Roman, i. 356 
Christian, i. 357 
Torres, ii. 345 
Totila, ii. 16-28 ' 
Tower of Silence, Parsees’, i. 356 
Trani, ii. 160, 161 
Count of, ii. 238 
Trapani, i. 2, 19, 105, 240, 243 
Trent, ii. 290 
Trezza, i. 6 
Tribunali, Palazzo dei, ii. 346, 362 
Trilogy, tragic, i. 85 
Trinakros, i. 2 
Triocala, i. 310 
Tripoli, ii. 263 
Trogilos, i. 36 
Troia, ii, 134 
Troina, ii. 205, 206, 207, 209-211 
Trypho, i. 310 
Tudextifen, ii. 147 
Tunis, 1. 216; 11. 274, 315, 357 
Tuscany, ii. 303 
Two Sicilies, i. 10;-ii. 262, 334 
Tyche, i. 95, 119 


U ‘ 
Ulysses, i. 5, 6, 26, 217, 224 . 
Unities, the three, i. 85-86 
Utrecht, peace of, ii. 270 


v 


Vandals, i. 11, 370-371, 373 
Varro, i. 271 
Venice, ii. 16, 273 
Venosa, ii. 147, 246 
Verona, ii. 16, 310 
battle of, ii. 2 
Verres, i. 10, 23, 286, 318, 321-338; ii. 5,129 


Alsi 


Versification among the ancients, i. 46 
Vesuvius, ii. 129 
Vettius, i. 306-307 
Victor Amadeus, i. 10 
Vienna, ii. 6, 284 
Villani, ii. 322 
Vindomar, i. 275 
Virginius, i. 352 
Vitalian, i. 240; il. 34 
Vitiges, iil. 12, 15 
Vulcan, i. 33 


W 
Walter of the Mill, i. 278 


Brienne, ii. 287 _ 
War of the Images, ii. 55 
War chariots, first appearance of, i. 176 
William of Apulia, ii. 152, 259 
Bras-de-Fer, 11. 139, 142, 146, 150, 
152-161 
the First of England, the ‘Con- 
queror,’ il. 205 
of Evreux, ii. 205 
Grantmesnil, ii. 248 
Hauteville, ii. 187 
Holland, ii. 295 
Montreuil, 11. 235 
Salerno, ii. 184 
the First of Sicily, the ‘ Bad,’ ii, 
267, 271-276 
Second of Sicily the ‘ Good,’ 
il. 267, 268, 276-279 
Third of Sicily, ii. 268, 283 
the Swine, ii. 292, 293 
Wolf of the Abruzzi. See Pandolph of . 
Capua 
Wolsey, ii. 354 
Worms, assembly at, ii. 170 


x 
Xerxes, 1. 50, 54, 69 
Ximenes, Cardinal, ii. 353 


Z 


Zacynthus, i. 1g0 
Zama, battle of, i. 268, 283, 289, 201 
Zancle, i. 2, 18, 37, 69. See Messina 
Zante, 1. 190 
Zeno of Elea, i. 14 
Emperor, ii. 2 
Zeus, 1, 3 
Zeuxis, i. 66 
Zisa palace, ii. 275, 362 
Zoroaster, i. 44, 51 
Zurita, li. 350 

















il 


3 0112 064713586 
| 





| 

















ydithl | 
HT 
iH] Hi 
HAE 


Hit 
Hh 1} 
thy) 
Vhs 
{|i 




















| 
| 
' 





li 
1H 








Hi 
| 
HHI 


Hi 
La AAT 











anaaat 
| 


nani i 
HH 
























































PEED ittis GAEEEAGUROUSEADL ANS 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 


































































































